Strixhaven, Episode 3: Full Set Review, Part 2 of 3
The full set of Strixhaven has been revealed and that means it’s time for Part 2 of our comprehensive Set Review! This episode tackles the Lesson mechanic and the most important spells, with a special focus on Modern and Pioneer. On Sunday we’ll cover the best creatures and MDFCs.
The remaining installments in this series can be found here:
Brewer’s Guide to Strixhaven, Part 1: Recruitment Week
Brewer’s Guide to Strixhaven, Part 3: Creatures and MDFCs
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Artwork: Harness Infinity by Seb McKinnon
At a Glance: Cards Discussed in Part 2
Retriever Phoenix
Learn + Lessons
Baleful Mastery
Devastating Mastery
Verdant Mastery
Ingenious Mastery
Fervent Mastery
Decisive Denial
Vanishing Verse
Lash of Malice
Test of Talents
Fracture
Culling Ritual
Mortality Spear
Deadly Brew
Expressive Iteration
Multiple Choice
Emergent Sequence
Rushed Rebirth
Tend the Pests
Magma Opus
Harness Infinity
Body of Research
Draconic Intervention
New: Full Episode Transcript!
Automated transcripts are not 100% accurate. Please use this transcript only for cursory reference. If you need to quote any of our content, please contact us.
Daniel Schriever: [00:00:00] You are listening to Faithless Brewing, a magic: the gathering podcast for the rogue deck builder each week, we designed new decks in modern and pioneer. We’ve put our creations to the test and share our findings on the air. Today. We present part two of our brewers guide to Strixhavens. This set is chock full of exciting spells from cheap removal to Epic finishers. We Cover them all in episode three of Strixhaven seasons. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
David Robertson: [00:01:01] hello and welcome to the faithless brewing podcast. I am David Robertson joined as always by my guy on the left coast. He is Damon Alexander Damon. How’s it going?
Damon Alexander: [00:01:10] Hey, Hey, just had a good time watching back to the future last week. It’s very fun. How it used to be. It was like a cool period piece. We get to see the 1960s and then come back and hang out in the 1980s or whatever, but watching it now, it’s like two period pieces in one movie.
David Robertson: [00:01:24] Well, it goes back to 1955, first of all, but I take your point. I do always enjoy when they show the like it’s farther from now to 1985 than it is from 1985 to 1955. Oh, yeah. And then all these cultural theorists talk about the acceleration of culture, et cetera, et cetera. Chuck, Klosterman writes a lot about that.
If people are interested in a man who has accelerated the culture, the CEO of the faithless brewing podcast, he is cavedan online. He is Dan Schriever.
Daniel Schriever: [00:01:49] It’s good to be here, gentlemen, how are you doing
David Robertson: [00:01:52] back to the future to record this podcast and change the past? I don’t know. What is the Terminator line?
He went back into the past to change the future. That’s what it was. Well, we’ve got a busy podcast in front of us because the full spoiler for Strixhaven has come out. So in our last week’s pod, we started to go over the earliest spoilers. Now we’ve got the full spoiler. So just a quick reminder to everyone.
We are now releasing two podcasts a week. This first podcast, we are going to go through the rest of the learn and lesson spells. That’s a new mechanic and Strixhaven, as well as all of the spells of interests, not all of the spells, but the spells that we think might have a shot. And then in our next podcast, which will come out on Sunday, we will go through all the dual face cards and all the creatures.
So we’ve got a lot to get to. We will quickly give a shout out to our newest patron. Liam, see a welcome to the faithless brewing Patrion. Just a quick reminder, you can support us@patrion.com backslash faithless brewing. Um, all right now onto the spoilers. So guys, I mean just a ton of new cards are out and the set has a bunch of crazy stuff going on.
I think we should probably start with the finishing off the mechanic. That is, uh, the one that was kind of the most eye catching, which is the sort of lesson slash learn mechanic.
Daniel Schriever: [00:03:12] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this mechanic really scared me when they explained what it did. Each card with learn fetches something out of your sideboard or your whisper board effectively giving you a flashbacks to the whole companion era.
Now that we’ve seen the mechanic, there are 21 cards with learn and I believe 20 lessons. There’s also a card that sort of counts as a lesson. So maybe 21 of each, if we want to map it out that way, what are your impressions overall having seen the totality of the mechanic now, should we be scared or is this going to be
Damon Alexander: [00:03:44] on the whole, they seem a little bit geared towards limited in power level, and we don’t have any, you know, big splashy.
Mythics like, Omnath or Oko on a lesson or a card that learns to make me super nervous about as a mechanic, but there is one car that looks pretty fiery, uh, which I believe David has a lot to say about,
David Robertson: [00:04:04] yeah, I agree with Damon. Um, th th I think they did a lot of, it looks like they did a lot of testing on this specific mechanic.
Um, you know, maybe because it is so different and I would say. Because I feel like companions really missed the Mark by so much anything that evokes that. Um, you know, I think they took a lot of care on and, and to Damon’s point, I think this is a cool way to involve sideboards in limited games. I think this is going to make for actually great limited play, but it looks like each of the cards on specific rate is not powerful enough where, you know, we’ve got an Oko situation or, or an Omnath situation.
But to David’s point again, I do love the design specifically of Retriever Phoenix. Uh, this is three and a red for a two, two flying haste when Retriever Phoenix enters the battlefield. If you cast it learn. So this is a car that both learns, which again, a quick reminder, it gets a lesson from your sideboard or you discard a card to draw a card.
But if it’s in your graveyard, if you would learn, you may instead return it to the battlefield. So it’s similar kind of to ArcLight Phoenix where it replaces, or it comes back into play for no mana. If you perform this specific feat, um, it is missing one power. And although I think this card is super cool, I actually think it’s not particularly powerful.
The mechanic itself is very parasitic. So when we say that we mean a mechanic that doesn’t exist in any other sets. So there’s not a lot of, there’s not a deep pool of, uh, learn effects that we can go back to, you know, that were cast weirdly or not cast properly when they designed Kamigawa or something like this.
Damon Alexander: [00:05:39] What’s cool is that as card is you can almost officially label it a learning matters card.
David Robertson: [00:05:44] Yes, absolutely.
Damon Alexander: [00:05:46] Parkins back to Reading Rainbow of course, learning matters. It should be the best card in magic.
David Robertson: [00:05:51] This is the LaVar Burton of the set really is what we’re trying to say.
Damon Alexander: [00:05:56] Yeah. It’s a little sad that you have to bring back the Phoenix instead of learning though. So actually maybe it’s like learning is stupid. Get a Phoenix instead.
Daniel Schriever: [00:06:05] This is like joining the military or something out of high school.
David Robertson: [00:06:08] Well, I was going to say it’s like dropping out of school and literally getting a Firebird.
Daniel Schriever: [00:06:14] Nice. Yeah. So the replacement effect means that if you have multiple Retriever Phoenixes in the graveyard casting, you’re Professor of Symbology and learning only gets back one Phoenix.
Um, so when that sense, the ceiling is lower than, you know, ArcLight. At some point you can get two, three ArcLight phoenixes in the graveyard and then bring them all back at once in one spectacular turn. Not going to do that with Retriever Phoenix, and no, the first Phoenix does not bring the second one back out of the graveyard because it has that clause.
You only learn off the Phoenix. If you cast it bias. If you hard cast a Phoenix from your hand and you have a second one in the graveyard, that seems like a pretty nice turn to me. You get two Firebirds coming across for four or flying haste.
Damon Alexander: [00:06:55] So you’re saying we shouldn’t be super worried about legacy people going, you know, turn one ritual, ritual, Buried Alive, Hunt for Specimens, one Retriever Phoenix.
Daniel Schriever: [00:07:08] Well, I actually think this Phoenix is like a lot better than it looks. If you do like a Phoenix tier list, you know, history of Phoenix is they all come back from the graveyard. They all fly. Some have Hayes, some don’t some require Manor to come back. Some don’t some require you doing a lot of something you don’t really want to do a, this one requires doing a little bit of something you only have to learn once now, do you actually want to learn, I guess that depends on how we feel about the learn cards, but just in terms of like how much input you have to get to get the Phoenix back with Hayes.
I think it’s actually not asking that much and that makes you actually want to try it.
David Robertson: [00:07:42] So are you thinking that you might try it in modern or pioneer?
Daniel Schriever: [00:07:46] Well, I think I would have to just like pick a number. Let’s say I want 12 learned cards
David Robertson: [00:07:52] for learn cards. Yeah.
Daniel Schriever: [00:07:54] Yeah. Um, I guess not counting the Phoenix or Tony, the Phoenix.
David Robertson: [00:07:57] I’m not sure. I was gonna say, if you count the Phoenix, I would play 14 learned cards. So for Phoenix plus 10 other cards and maybe more, if you could justify it and like two lessons in the board, and then mostly you’re just trying to fetus size.
Daniel Schriever: [00:08:10] I think so. And then I got to like, look at what are the learning cards?
So Professor of Symbology feels like the best. I really like, Eyetwitch the one, one flying that, what dies you learn? I like it. Cause it only costs one manna. There’s also a red, what is it? Uh, instant Academic Dispute for just one that learns for only a single man. So these are pretty cheap. Um, but going up the chain, you know, there’s Dream Strix as a three man flyer that learns when it dies.
If you just want a big Derpy creature, there’s Gnarled Professor to green, green for a five, four trample that learns. So I have to look at like, what are the learning cards and what can I surround them with? Does it have to be in Modern or can I get away with it and Pioneer? I’m not sure.
David Robertson: [00:08:53] Yeah. I mean, I think the problem here is the opportunity cost, right?
Like Arclight Phoenix has 50% more power. So from two to three, that’s a huge difference. And then it asks you to do something that you kind of already want to do, which is cast spells. Um, and specifically in Pioneer, you get to cast some of the most powerful spells in the game. You get to cast Dig Through Time, you get to cast Treasure Cruise uh, in Historic, you get to cast, Brainstorm and Faithless Looting for some reason.
So, you know, those are spells, you already want to cast, right? I mean, casting Treasure Cruise just feels amazing. Uh, back when Faithless Looting was legal enough that we named our podcast after it, uh, that’s just a car. Do you want it in your deck, losing out on the ability to get your Phoenix back for casting those and having to put these specific learn cards in is, is actually a pretty big cost, even though I agree with you, Dan, that the design is super cool and I hope that it’s a thing, but, Um, being very limited in your, in your car selection is kind of a red flag to me.
Damon Alexander: [00:09:51] You had a follow up on what David said, like the current Academic Dispute that you mentioned is a single read to learn, but the problem is the other part of it is extremely marginal. How you hit your blocks has turned a table.
You may have a gain reach until end of turn. So you can lower your opponent’s creature into its doom. That just, isn’t a very good magic card. And so with Brainstorm, Brainstorm is a great magic card. You don’t have to worry about like, you know, you play that card. Nobody’s gonna look at you funny, uh, Academic Dispute.
If you play that purely for the learner, you’re really just devoting a whole card into getting back your Phoenix, uh, which is fine. But at the end of day, you’re getting back at two to, you know, flying. Hey, so you could Unearth a Flamewake Phoenix. I get the same effect.
Daniel Schriever: [00:10:28] Fair point. The other thing to keep in mind though, is that you don’t have to get the Phoenix.
That’s amazing. You also have the option to rummage. Perhaps this car doing another Phoenix, or you can go fishing into the whispered going deep in the curriculum for a, you know, a 300 level class. And now that we have all 20 of the lesson cards, how do we feel about that option? Do we feel like any of these are actually worth the card?
So if I’m casting my Academic Disputes, I’m actually getting a card with the value out of the sideboard. Uh, we have a, it looks like a cycle at rare and uncommon and every color. There’s also a mythic lesson for seven called Mascot Exhibition. That makes a bunch of tokens. The uncommon room removals seem to be slightly over costed.
Nice removal spells Start from Scratch. Destroys an artifact for three men, a Containment Breach for two and a green disenchanted something and creates a pest token. Necrotic Fumes for three exiles, a creature or a Planeswalker, but you also have to sacrifice a creature of your own. Or sorry, exilic reach of your own. Mercurial Transformation to an oblique of sorcery until the end of turn target non land, permanent loses all abilities, becomes your choice of a one, one frog or a four for octopus until the end of the term, those are base power.
So you could potentially shrink something. You could grow something you could even target, uh Artifactory and champion. If you just needed to turn it off for a turn, those are just the new ones we’ve seen. We talked about a few of the other ones last week. How are you guys feeling about the lessons on offer?
Damon Alexander: [00:12:00] The one that excites me the most is Mascot Exhibition. This a mythic rare for seven color list that gets you a two, one white and black creature struggle with flying a three-two spirit and a four for blue and red elemental. So you just get like a lot of steps on the board and the thing is it’s expensive, but kind of is like a percent or whatever.
It doesn’t feel quite as bad. Uh, you know, Carla Containment Breach really should because to manna, you need these cards that are, you know, one phone removal to be cheap, to make it worth it. And so you’re already playing this on the tail half of learning, um, perhaps you’re playing on main deck and Containment Breach.
I’ll put it that way. And so you’re all of a sudden they get to spend like, you know, five minutes a disenchant plus maybe get something off the other part of your learning spell, um, that it feels like you’re spending too much Manoj at an early turn of the game. Whereas Mascot Exhibition, doesn’t pretend to be playing in the early game.
It’s like you have a ton of manna. You’re doing a learn, spell, you get some fringe effect. Next, turn you on tap, you play seven, you get a good board presence. And maybe that’s enough to take over a game in the same way that getting like a giganto out of your sideboard, Ken.
David Robertson: [00:13:05] Yeah. Mascot Exhibition exactly reminds me of a card.
Like Jegantha where it’s actually like, not a good card, but it’s a fun card to play if it’s the end of the game. And so. Jegantha is functionally, whatever eight managed to do the thing, Mascot Exhibition, you’re casting a normal spells. So let’s say the first half doesn’t cost you anything. And then at seven, Carlos manna seems like an amazing card in limited.
Uh, were any of your learning spouses turns into this seven man, uh, uh, slam at the late game Containment Breach is a bad card, but it is nice sometimes to have access to that effect out of your sight in game one. Um, we talked about a card last week. That was basically, uh, it’s a three Manor that blows up a permanent and they get a three, two, so sort of like the elephant card, that’s white and Beast Within, but it’s a sorcery, all lessons are sorceries.
So that’s a big step down and it can’t pull up lands, which sometimes matters, you know, even Mercurial Transformation. It’s not an instance, so you can never get anyone in combat unless they really forget that you cast it earlier in the turn. So. I think the lessons are really, they were obviously very careful with them.
I don’t think there’s any obviously like super powerful thing to do. And I think the benefits are really on the fringes. So I think you need to be getting something out of the rummaging effect, which is maybe why the Phoenix is the most attractive sort of quote unquote builder on card with learn because it both is a source of learning and it itself is a card that pays you off rummaging, et cetera.
Damon Alexander: [00:14:31] So mercurial transformation is a pretty interesting one just in the sense that it’s this extremely fringed and weird effect, but it targets a non land permanent. And so, for example, if you’re putting as a Teferi, Time Raveler, when you try and get something through counter magic and you have your own counter magic, you can make there Teferi into a blue frog, or if an Ensnaring Bridge has you down, you can make that a frog.
And so like I wonder, I suspect that in modern, like, you know, the front half of learning is going to be not quite on rate enough to justify having access to this admittedly fringe effect, but it does have some capability.
David Robertson: [00:15:06] Yeah, that’s an interesting point. Damon also, you know, if you make something, you know, Teferi a one, one, or whatever, bridge, whatever, a one, one, now it dies to Bolt or something else.
So forget about stopping it for a turn. You could kill it for ever.
Daniel Schriever: [00:15:22] I saw an interesting storm list proposed in modern. I don’t remember the player’s name. I’m sorry, who proposed this? It was on a modern subreddit. He was using the card First Day of Class, which is one in a red instance learn. And also this turn creatures, the enter, the battlefield will gain haste and enter with an additional plus one plus one counter the way they were using that with the parrot, with Empty the Warrens as your primary main deck plan.
So Empty the Warrens will produce a bunch of goblins. First Day of Class will make those two, two gobbles with haste. And then you also get to learn on top of all that. And they were thinking that Mercurial Transformation might be like an Echoing Truth, style of car to just have access to for free and game one, if the opponent, well, I guess in game one, you wouldn’t need it, but.
In game two though. Now you’re really talking, the opponent has a Damping Sphere or something.
Damon Alexander: [00:16:11] So basically First Day of Classes, like a Bushwhacker effect that also learns.
Daniel Schriever: [00:16:16] Yeah, it’s an interesting one. I mean, I’ve seen people say maybe put that in dredge just, you know, rummage with it and try to get some hasty Narcomoebas back.
That seems a little iffy to me, but that’s actually like a case where I feel like learn. They costed it at slightly less than one man on. And that’s kind of interesting. Now the, the lessons, as you pointed out are over cost of by at least one man, if not more.
David Robertson: [00:16:39] Yeah. So I think it’s going to have to be people finding very creative uses, which is encouraging to me like a blue, red storm deck.
That’s using this as a crazy Bushwhacker like that is a cool use of a new card, as opposed to like Damon was saying something where it’s just like for color format, mythic rare resolve, it does its thing. And everyone’s, it’s obvious how powerful it’s going to be, uh, right away. So in that sense, I think so far, uh, the mechanics seems to be a success.
Daniel Schriever: [00:17:06] Later on we’ll find out that they had a card called Oko’s Teachings is the most, the most Cetaphil quietly removed it, leaving the game, like, Oh, okay. Actually. Nevermind.
Damon Alexander: [00:17:16] Yeah. And then we’ll also want to learn. Mechanic is a way under costed and there was cardstock cost three more manna,
David Robertson: [00:17:24] but that remains to be seen.
So onto our next cycle, this is the mastery cycle. So what this is is a, a effect normally slightly over costed in the upper right part of the card, and it has the option to be Casper less. And when you do that for less, your opponent gets some slight benefit. So the first card that we’ll highlight here is baleful mastery.
Baleful Mastery is three and a black for an instant XL target creature, or Planeswalker however, you may pay one in a black, rather than pay the spells man, a cost. If you cast it for one and a black. An opponent draws a card. So it’s Forman XL, target creature or Planeswalker or to manna XL, target creature, Plains Walker, and an opponent draws a card.
What do you guys think about this?
Daniel Schriever: [00:18:07] This one looks really good to me. I mean, we talked about last week. How in the Narset Bring to Light deck that you drew up? David, this will be like a perfect card. I think that giving the opponent a card is something that we can live with in this day and age. And it seems crazy to like my instincts as a limited player to say that, but you look at a card like Assassin’s Trophy, like Path to Exile.
Give them the extra card who cares. Threats are so powerful these days that once you get going, as long as you’re not dead, yet, if you get your thing going, you’ll make up that card in no time.
Damon Alexander: [00:18:38] Yeah. And a lot of the best threats have some of these sort of ETV anyway. So they’re already up a card, uh, you know, may as well give them more cards.
Um, what’s interesting is yeah, like the, the most natural comparison is a card like a Hero’s Downfall or Murderous Rider, which is one black, black destroy, a creature, or Planeswalker Murderous Rider. You lose to life, but you get a two-three Lifelink around the adventure half. Um, and so here we have a potential discount, uh, at the expense of your point of drawing a card, unless you have a Narset in play or something like that.
But if you have to pay full manna, you know, you’re not really overpaying and you know, 300 black is a good rate, of course, at the full man. He’d rather have Eat to Extinction. Uh, well, she’s no play, but maybe you pay one to black often enough, uh, that this is, this gets there.
David Robertson: [00:19:23] Yeah. And we’ve highlighted multiple times the modality.
Right? So. Like Damon saying in certain like game situations, you’re just going to pay for it. Doesn’t matter. It has this extra text and you don’t need to use it, but in the times when you really need to use it, like Dan saying to kill it Omnath, you know what the draw trigger on the stack before they play their land to game for life or whatever.
Um, you know, the extra card is
Damon Alexander: [00:19:43] I never had, I thought Hagra mauling would be a good card and it has literally zero play ever. I’m not sure people even play in limited, um,
David Robertson: [00:19:53] limited.
Daniel Schriever: [00:19:54] I don’t know if that always costs four, that’s that’s the key.
Damon Alexander: [00:19:57] Sure, sure. But I thought that, you know, the advantage of being a land would be good enough and it just isn’t so,
David Robertson: [00:20:03] um, yeah, it does.
It doesn’t mean planes, walkers. That that was a huge on that card. Yeah. All right. So you guys are pretty bullish on the black one. I would say let’s go through these other cars and see if they intrigued you.
So devastating mastery, two white, white, white, white sorcery destroy all non land permanence, or you may have cast it for two white, white. And if you do an opponent chooses up to two non land permits that control and return them to their owner’s hand. So a planar cleansing that’s a car that people might be familiar with. That was three and three white to, uh, to cast. And, uh, it was a devastating mastery effect, but this has this, um, mastery, uh, cheat clause.
What do you guys, what do you guys make of this?
Daniel Schriever: [00:20:49] I kind of liked this one too. Is that crazy? Granted, we haven’t seen planar cleansing cast in a long time, but the rate seems fair. It seems like you’re not really overpaying for this much light with bail, from Eat to extinction. This one casting for two white, white, you know, obviously your opponent picks up their two best things.
It feels kind of bad, but that is still a board wipe. You know, that’s a card like Devastation Tide balances, all permanence, whatever they have, if they, you know, have creatures and plants, walkers, if they vomited a bunch of tokens or artifacts onto the board, it doesn’t matter. It’s all going up, back into their hand and you’re at least buying time you reset on for land your, to ferry or something on five.
And you just have to like, hold them off for a few turns until you’ve cast the full version on six. And you know, eventually they’ll concede out of frustration.
Damon Alexander: [00:21:38] Yeah. This car seems maybe good against the Mono-Green Walker’s deck in pioneer. One of the strengths of that deck is they have multiple threat types across creatures and Planeswalkers meanwhile, if they have to bounce, uh, to other things, it probably slows them down a lot because they have to first replay their Manoj elves.
If that’s what they’re returning, uh, in which gets you’ve probably killed their plans Walker, or they return their planes Walker. And if, if I knew manna, elves were just more land drops. Meanwhile, if you can ever pay the full cost, they just, everything they have
David Robertson: [00:22:05] dies. Yeah. The one thing that doesn’t do, however, is kill any lands that have been woken up by Nissa.
Uh, but yeah, this is good. They also, you know, uh, accelerate within champions as well. I think in general, I’m just off of sweepers. Uh, six minute sweepers, four minute sweepers. I just don’t think they’re that good. Uh, I think David made a great point that all these threats now like draw cards. So, you know, sweeping away their, Omnath and whatever else is like, all right.
I mean, sure. I quote unquote two for one then, but they generated a bunch of extra manna and drew three extra cards and they’re probably gonna, once I’ve tapped out, cast a bunch of stuff, blinking permanents that also draw when they come back, it feels bad. So, and, and like putting four white sources of my deck that also feels bad.
Daniel Schriever: [00:22:54] Fair point fair point.
David Robertson: [00:22:57] All right onto the green mastery, verdant mastery five and a green sorcery. Search your library for up to four basic land cards and reveal them, put one of them onto the battle. Okay. This is complicated. Put one of them onto the battlefield tapped under an opponent’s control. If you paid the three and a green mastery price, instead of the six, no matter what you put two of the basic lands, you found tapped, uh, under your control and you put the remaining lands into your hand.
So if you pay six, you get two into play tapped. And two into your hand. If you pay for you, get two into play tapped, one into your hand, and one tapped. If your opponent has a basic undefined in their library, uh, they put one into play tapped.
Damon Alexander: [00:23:43] So the question, when do you play this card over car, like Circuitous route, those types of effects that are for manna for a sorcery socially library for two basics, put them in play taps, or in that case, you get Gates.
This card has a pretty meaningful downside. If you, uh, pay the three green costs for a pretty small upside, if you pay the five and a green.
David Robertson: [00:24:06] Yeah, I guess to me, the one thing that this does is when you cast it on for you guarantee that you will be able to cast a Sultai ultimatum the next turn, because it takes you to six lands in play tab, and then you have the seventh in your hand.
So if you, if that’s going to win the game and I can’t speak to the standard deck, but the pioneer one often can win that turn. Um, maybe it’s worth it, but I, yeah, my red alarm is kind of flagging exactly in the same way that Damon’s is that, that this is going to be not quite paying you off because yeah, there’s, there’s a bunch of cards are just formatted tab.
Put two lands into play tapped. Uh, you don’t have to give your opponent anything,
Daniel Schriever: [00:24:48] but this gets you 50% more lens to, into play tap and a land drop for next term. I mean, it’s, it’s like a circuitous route and a half. It’s like a loop de loop, extra routes.
Damon Alexander: [00:24:59] Yeah. Basically it has the same kind of card advantage of Circuitous route where you effectively go up to resources on your opponent with the downside that you’re extra resources, a card in hand, and there’s this, uh, Landon play.
And obviously land in play is superior to a land in hand. But if you’re playing a deck that is really good in a kind of a high resource situation, the opposite of, for example, a pox deck, then that might be worth it.
Daniel Schriever: [00:25:25] Yeah. You don’t play circuitous route because they’re trying to like two for one, the amount of the game you play it.
Because all I care about is getting my man up to whatever number eight for and you don’t care of what the opponent’s doing. Like most opponents will not use yesterday land. I’m just going to say that as if that’s true, just like Assassin’s Trophy. They won’t use the land. So yeah, extra land for you guaranteed ultimatum.
And who cares what they’ve done with their extra land?
David Robertson: [00:25:50] I guess I’m just only now reading it, understanding that the basic land is coming from your deck for them. So I guess you can also give them a color that they don’t need. I thought you actually, they ever get into search. You’re taking four basic lands out of your deck, no matter what.
So I guess if you give them a forest and it’s like a Monell red deck, you’re basically giving them a waste or something like this. So that’s a little bit, I will say, I guess. So I needed to learn how to read. I need to go back to some of those learn cards earlier to really understand all the or cards on this network.
So, okay. That’s a little more intriguing. I will say
Damon Alexander: [00:26:26] I’m gonna read the text, but I just got back in Phoenix retriever instead.
David Robertson: [00:26:29] Yeah, exactly. I was unable to finish this book. I just drew a Phoenix. All right. So now that I understand how the car works, I’m a slightly more interested. All right. So Dan is a plus a pro green, or you just think it’s better than we think it is.
Daniel Schriever: [00:26:43] I’m I’m pro I guess I like all of them. All three of these mastery cards.
David Robertson: [00:26:47] All right. Here’s one maybe, or we’ll just quickly talk about the blue and red ones. Cause I th we have them flagged as maybe not as interesting. So the blue one quickly is Ingenious Mastery, two and a blue X sorcery. Um, you draw X cards, however, you can just play it, pay two and a blue.
So no X, if that’s paid, you draw three cards, then an opponent creates two treasure tokens and they scribe two. So, um, you know, this card, Dan, you’ve got a note here. You you’ve compared to painful Truths. You compare to the treacherous blessing. Neither of those cards sees a lot of play in modern or pioneer.
And it’s worse than both of them.
Daniel Schriever: [00:27:23] Yeah. I mean, this is a classic trap card. A brewer is trap card because you’ll see it. And like the natural temptation is to think, Oh, well, how bad is this bargain for me? You know, they get to treasures and they scribe, but I get to an, a blue blue for three cars. Like maybe I can somehow work that to my advantage.
And then just remember that if you want three cars for three men, you have that you have other options that just do that. You don’t have to worry about them getting treasures. So this is a classic trap and the other mode is quite different. I mean the X two blue draw, that’s like a really terrible Mind Spring and that car doesn’t see any play either.
So I would just skip this one fund for multiplayer, but not for one-on-one.
David Robertson: [00:28:02] And then the red one, uh, Fervent Mastery three and two red search your library for up to three cards, put them into your hand shuffle, then discard three cards at random. You may pay two in a red red, instead of that. If you do that while you’re putting three cards in your discarding at random, your opponent may discard any number of cards and then draws that many cards.
So it’s like a huge Gamble, uh, gambles one red to do this with one card. This does it three times for five manna or three times for format, if you want your opponent to rummage freely. So I can’t think of the combo. Obviously this is a card. I think you’re intending to win that turn or maybe in the near future.
Damon Alexander: [00:28:41] It’s extremely bad against opposition agents.
David Robertson: [00:28:45] I mean, are you just putting like all of your, a five man artifact guys, the, that play for free, if you discard three in your hand and just hoping that they stay, I mean, is that the, get the hollow
Damon Alexander: [00:28:57] ones to the yard?
David Robertson: [00:28:58] Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully say they stay in your hand.
Daniel Schriever: [00:29:03] Oh, well, there is a creature that we’ll talk about that let’s see. We actually cast cards that you discard. So maybe that’s the key. I think it’s called a conspiracy theorist. So you get your Hollow ones that way. I don’t know. I mean, the reason why I don’t even want to bother with this is because spending my whole turn, whether that’s format or five minutes to do this thing.
Just feels like a way to, to lose, even if you’ve got to keep exactly what you wanted. I feel like I’d still lose, but maybe a fire, as I mentioned is in play, then it’s actually, we’re thinking about like, can I find three cards that win, even if I discard them.
David Robertson: [00:29:36] All right. So we have a couple of cards that are interesting and some that seem to be a little limited.
That’s the mastery cycle. So now we have, what I think is kind of the highlight of the set, which is a lot of the removal is really interesting, very powerful and very interesting designs. So the first one we’re going to talk about is Decisive Denial, a blue and a green instant choose one target creature, you control fights or your creature.
You do not control or counter target, non creature spell unless it’s controller pays three Carlos manner. So we call that a man, a leek effect. Um, I really liked this card. It reminds me a little bit of drown in the loch, uh, where you can use this as a removal spell. You can use it as a commerce bell, uh, its main DECA bowl, I think because it’s so.
Uh, modal and I think it fits very well. And she sort of like green decks, just splashing, a little bit of blue, which is already something we’re starting to see in pioneer. Um, yeah, I think this car is cool.
Daniel Schriever: [00:30:36] Do you think this is a suitable sideboard card? Are you thinking only main deck?
David Robertson: [00:30:41] I would probably not play this as a sideboard card unless I needed to save space.
So if you look at, I have a deck linked here in their sideboard slot, they are playing some stubborn denials, some primal Mights, a Mystical dispute. If you wanted to save space, right? This card is obviously worse than its specific case. And primal might it’s worse in the specific case than stubborn denial, some of the time.
Um, and same for Mystical dispute. You could combine this, right? This could be your primal Might and your stubborn denial. If you wanted to make more rooms, like I. I’m sick of losing the Lotus. So I’m going to put specific cyber cards to beat that, which I often like to do. I don’t know if that’s the right thing or wrong thing to do, but it is a thing you could do.
Uh, and you also see this deck is main decking, primal might, and Stubborn denial. Again, you can replace a separate denial with this. Now you have more primal might effects Mendeck while still keeping some counter spells, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it really lets you toggle, you know, adjust your dial to do certain things as you like.
Damon Alexander: [00:31:43] Yeah. This is some of the designs for arena. Best of one is leaking into our formats. And I think this is it’s good to have these cards around. I’m a little bit skeptical just in the sense that you know, okay. One advantage over Drown in the loch is that it doesn’t just die to rest in peace, which it doesn’t all.
It does little, nothing in that board state. On the other hand, drowning, the lock is just a little bit more effective when it’s working. Um, it can counter both creatures and non features. It’s a no questions asked counter and the side of this pay three business. Uh, countering creature can freely be better than killing it.
And even further, this doesn’t just kill a creature. You have to fight it. So you have to have your creature alive and have a knock it fizzled along the way, all in a color pairing that unlike blue-black typically is playing the more at sorcery speed, especially if you’re playing a deck that has creatures big enough to win fights.
Daniel Schriever: [00:32:32] Do you think there’s a suitable for something like Bant StoneBlade with Ice-Fang Coatl, and modern where your creatures are not that big, but they were kind of two for ones and you’re going to have a death touch Ice-Fang, or maybe a Batterskull or something.
Damon Alexander: [00:32:46] That’s an interesting idea. I think it’s certainly worth trying.
David Robertson: [00:32:48] Yeah. I think for the, some of the reasons that Damon named, I don’t know if this is quite powerful enough for modern, I’m thinking of this as a pioneer power level card, where for instance, manna leak is not a car that you can play. Um, this lines up very poorly against some of the counter spell effects you are allowed to play in modern.
Um, but counter spell effects are notoriously pretty weak. In pioneer. So Mendeck Decisive Denial is, you know, pretty good compared to some of the other two men, uh, counter small effects. If we’re talking about Censor or something like this.
Damon Alexander: [00:33:20] Yeah. And the thing is that on the one hand, it’s true that I saying with this card, lets you kill something, but only if you’re icing as desktop.
So if your product goes, for example, turn to Leonin Arbiter or whatever, you’re looking at your Mana Leak, uh, and then look at your fighting ability and you’re not going to get to three snow lands on the other hand. I mean, if you’re one of the cavernous holes, you’ll be happy you have this card because it doesn’t just completely die.
Like Mana Leak does. Hmm.
David Robertson: [00:33:46] Anyway, like many of the cards are going to talk about, I really liked that there’s times on this card is powerful and times where it’s not, I don’t like removal that blanks, text boxes. So exactly like David’s saying sometimes just cards insane. It does a bunch of stuff that to man, a car shouldn’t be able to do all the time.
It doesn’t do anything at all. That’s great. So another car that is often like that could, that will be like that Vanishing Verse. Vanishing Verse white, and a black instant exile target, mano colored permanent. That’s it one sentence from a set with a lot of verbosity. This is a short and sweet. So Damon, when you think about this card Vanishing Verse.
Damon Alexander: [00:34:23] Yeah. This car seems great. I mean, a lot of threats out there are in fact model colored. Um, of course it’s completely bad against the car, like Wrenn and Six or Teferi. I think you just have to, like, as a result, not load up on too many of these, it’s similar to Abrupt Decay. Abrupt Decay can kill a lot of things very effectively, and it just totally misses on a lot of things too.
And so you typically don’t start, uh, you know, some sort of black, green, X deck and load up on four abruptly kids. Uh, you play like, you know, a couple,
Daniel Schriever: [00:34:52] I think it will start off as a two of, in five color NIV in both modern and pioneer. And then we’ll see, I was hoping that someone would have like, run the numbers by now.
I’m just like, okay. In each format, here’s the average number of targets per deck, but everyone’s playing arena these days. So no one has run the numbers
David Robertson: [00:35:11] just to clarify an artifact. That’s not colored. So, you know, whatever Solemn Simulacrum, this cannot destroy that because no color at all is not Mon-El color. Just to clarify.
Daniel Schriever: [00:35:24] Yeah, that’s correct.
David Robertson: [00:35:25] This cannot destroy Thought-Knot Seer, for instance.
Damon Alexander: [00:35:29] Yeah. I think we’ll actually play, this is the “Esperka” deck, which apparently you did quite well over the weekend and the challenges. I think that it was two expert pals in the finals, including the creator TSP gender. Uh, one I heard they
David Robertson: [00:35:44] split.
I don’t know. Well, he took the win in the split, so. Sure, sure.
Damon Alexander: [00:35:51] Um, yeah, so that’s like, I think has enough counter magic to generally speaking. Try to counter the things that this card can’t hit and only let through things that this card is effective against immune while in the slot where this card is effective, it’s extremely effective, uh, for what it does.
David Robertson: [00:36:07] Yeah. Exiling is not trivial. The fact that, uh, sort of along the same lines of David’s talking about, I think index with Snapcaster Mage you know, when this is great, you get to cast it that second time, uh, you know, when it’s bad Snapcaster Target’s Archmage’s Charm, or Esper Charm or, you know, something else that gets to do something.
So yeah.
Daniel Schriever: [00:36:24] Yeah. This takes out a Heliod, takes out Scourge of the Skyclaves, Death’s Shadow and doesn’t let their Lurrus bring it back. And I think it is actually like a very, very good card, better than a lot of the other removal that you could play or you would play. But Damon raises an interesting point is if, if you don’t need this to be your only removal, if it’s just like part of your removal suite and you have the choice, um, then I think it gets even stronger.
David Robertson: [00:36:47] So like Mardu mediums, that’s just a pilot removal and yeah, exactly bad. Two and three minute creatures that we’ll just get to stick to those in there.
Daniel Schriever: [00:36:57] Actually. I mean, it’ll prevent you from losing to a Heliod , but otherwise would’ve just gotten you
David Robertson: [00:37:01] and then Seasoned Pyromancer it looks it away. If you know they’re playing near miss it,
Damon Alexander: [00:37:06] or if they’re playing Tron.
David Robertson: [00:37:10] All right, so cool card. I think we’re all a hit on vanishing verse.
up next Lash of Malice. Lash of Malice black Manoj instant target creature gets plus two minus two until end of turn. This card is a little innocuous. I think it’s quite good. Um, they haven’t printed a black man of minus two minus two, since I’m spacing on the cards name, just figured wait.
Disfigure was the instant Dead Weight as the enchantment Disfigure actually saw play sometimes in sideboards, even in Modern, uh, way back when. I think this card is going to see legitimate play in Pioneer. It kills man elves on turn one and it kills whatever Soul-Scar Mage on turn one. And then if you’re a deck that’s trying to get aggressive. It’s, it’s a pump spell at the same time. It just seems really flexible.
Damon Alexander: [00:38:03] So if you’re not aggressive deck, you’re just playing for Fatal Push to start off your list. Would you ever round out fatal pushes with latch of malice in a non-aggressive deck or is this card the only, it’s only good in aggressive decks?
David Robertson: [00:38:16] I think the sorcery speed one black, uh, destroy creature or Planeswalker that CC two or less and can, you know, blow up anything for four is probably my go-to fifth option. If I’m looking for one minute removal, I will say the fact that this is instant and that’s a sorcery comes up all the time when I’m on the play.
And I like play my land. If they play Manoj elf, I have to take my turn to off to cast a sorcery speed. One that comes up a ton. So maybe I would play this ahead of that, but only against certain decks. So.
Damon Alexander: [00:38:45] Yeah. You also have access to Heartless Act. Black just keeps getting a lot of good removal spells every set
David Robertson: [00:38:51] you have access to vanishing vers.
Damon Alexander: [00:38:53] Yeah, I had this card kills Toski. Oh, it is very efficient. I mean, heartless at cost to Manoj has that goes wrong sometimes.
Daniel Schriever: [00:39:02] So I really like this with, uh, prowess creatures. I’ve always been a fan of the card, Funeral Charm, which grants, plus two minus one, as one of his options, unlike a card like Dead Weight, or just figure you can’t put a Dead Weight on your own Soul-Scar Mage for any value, but this is just a clean three extra damage
David Robertson: [00:39:20] plus Dreadhorde Arcanist I didn’t even think of that.
Daniel Schriever: [00:39:24] Yeah. Well, you don’t want to kill your, that that might go a little too far.
David Robertson: [00:39:28] Well, you don’t have to cast this out of your graveyard. This, this let you cast Kolaghan’s Command, for instance.
Daniel Schriever: [00:39:33] Oh, that’s hot. Yeah. So I think this is actually going to be a really good card. It might not get a ton of hype, but people will just start picking it up. Maybe it’ll start in standard and then it will just migrate to other formats and everyone will just act like, Oh yeah, of course, Lash of Malice we’re going to hype it.
Now this card is good. Pay attention to it.
Damon Alexander: [00:39:52] Well, you got to just play Funeral Charm where you can,
Daniel Schriever: [00:39:55] no one toughness has been chased out of the all formats. Well, except Pioneer, but yeah, one toughness is not a thing in Modern anymore. So Funeral Charm doesn’t really kill anything anymore.
David Robertson: [00:40:05] Yeah. The fact that this kills the prowess creatures and Manoj elves is like a really big deal, uh, since those both matter in both modern and pioneer.
Yeah. All right. Can I,
Damon Alexander: [00:40:15] for the last year, mouse does have meaningful other modes.
David Robertson: [00:40:19] True discard is, is a fun mode.
Daniel Schriever: [00:40:21] Swamp walk. I’m all about that swamp.
David Robertson: [00:40:23] That also comes up from time to time. All right. Our next card. Test of Talents. Test of Talents. One of the blue instant. Counter target incident or sorcery spell search it’s controllers, graveyard, hand in library for any number of cards, with the same name as that spelling exile, then that player shuffles then draws a card for each card exiled from their hand this way.
So just a quick question on the templating here. This doesn’t say if you counter, you may do that. So this does it, even if the spells uncountable, is that correct?
Daniel Schriever: [00:40:56] Okay. Yeah, I guess that’s true.
Damon Alexander: [00:40:59] Uh, yeah,
David Robertson: [00:41:00] that’s a weird, sorry. I just noticed it as I was reading it normally, you know, I think because there’s so much verbiage on some of these cards, they skipped some of these texts that it is often not relevant, but anyway, so what do you guys think, Damon?
What do you think Test of Talents?
Damon Alexander: [00:41:13] I think this card is a lot better than you would think. I think that whenever you build a blue deck in any of these formats, the first thing you do in your sideboard is add like, Just painful stroke, a couple of mystical disputes and like a dispel and maybe a fluster storm or whatever, just cards that are good.
If you wind up in some sort of blue mirror, this car, it takes up one of those slots that maybe like this spill or the fluster storm becomes a test of talents. You could even play a main deck. The things that you never want to bring in, like Surgical against Bring to Light or Sultai ultimatum, Emergent Ultimatum, because first off you already have to, you have to counter it and then started to call it.
People did bring sorts of plants, Niv-Mizzet specifically that that was annoying. Um, sometimes, but also ineffective. Sometimes the thing with this is that for one in a blue, you’re getting a slightly more limited indicates it doesn’t hit in champions or Planeswalkers or artifacts. But if you counter a Lightning Bolt with this, I think you’re not that I’m happy.
That seems fine.
Daniel Schriever: [00:42:09] Hmm. So you’re saying you could bring this in against burn or Scapeshift.
Damon Alexander: [00:42:14] Yeah, I’d probably bring it in a Negate against burn. Um, if I had one of my sideboard, they have enough to throw enough spells at you that you’re happy to be able to counter like a Boros Charm. At some Point you have to make sure you’ve enough antique creature.
Of course, those are the true threats.
Daniel Schriever: [00:42:26] I guess I hadn’t really considered this as just a, a tool against other blue decks or other decks that are randomly casting normal spills. That makes me a little bit higher. I was thinking of it just as like Unmoored Ego, Quash, Invasive Surgery type effect. And there, it was like, I kind of just trust Unmoored Ego more, even though Ego takes your entire turn and you know, it’s a bad tempo player, but at least, you know, that like it’s, it’s done, the job has done catch I’m tapped out.
So they can’t Veil of Summer or something. And then, you know, the threat is the fused Test of talents, you actually gonna have to wait until the last possible moment, which is when the deadly spiral is actually on the stack. You got to win that counter war. And I’m a little bit more nervous about that, but maybe not it’s.
I mean, maybe it’s just like, you know, it’s only two men. Uh that’s. That’s great.
Damon Alexander: [00:43:11] Yeah, the thing is he doesn’t sit in the same cyber slot as Unmoored Ego. Does it sits in cyber slot that the, uh, you know, Dovin’s veto type card sits. Huh?
David Robertson: [00:43:19] Okay. And again, I like that this is a car that’s better in many circumstances and it’s worse than many circumstances.
So you actually have to think about it. So exactly like what Damon’s saying, you’re losing points against Planeswalkers, but you’re gaining points against it. Bring to Light or the Emergent Ultimatum or whatever card you’re worried about.
Damon Alexander: [00:43:37] Yeah. There is one part by this car that I really don’t like is pretty Ben can ladder
David Robertson: [00:43:46] noted this. This is going to be on pointed in Ken Lander.
Damon Alexander: [00:43:51] Yes, I can points anytime soon.
David Robertson: [00:43:54] All right. Bye. Act two modal spells here. Fracture. Fracture. White, and a black instant destroy target artifacts in Chapman or Planeswalker Dan, what do you think about this card?
Daniel Schriever: [00:44:05] I mean, I’m shocked that they’re putting all these in the same set.
We talked about Rip Apart last week and how that seemed like a great upgrade to Abrade, just in terms of conserving cyborg slots. Like you were talking about David, this is another Disenchant with upside it’s instant speeds. So it’s like directly competing with Disenchant. The thing that worries me about this is that I usually don’t bring in cards specifically to kill Planeswalkers.
So I’m worried that if I have a fracture in my sideboard, I see that my opponent has some Planeswalkers on their deck. Maybe it’s Wrenn and Six or whatever, it’s Teferi. And I haven’t seen any artifacts or in champions. Do I want to bring this in? Would I be like playing myself by bringing you this in? And then, you know, they just never played with Planeswalker or they do, but that’s, you know, a two for one and their fever.
So I kind of wondering if that plane’s walk, our texts is like a trap and I should just be thinking of this mainly the disenchant.
Damon Alexander: [00:44:53] I think that depending on what color combination. The Planeswalker text is either good or bad. If you’re playing blue, you’d much rather stop the plant soccer from paying the board in general.
But the thing is, if you’re not playing blue, you don’t always have that luxury.
David Robertson: [00:45:06] Yeah. I guess, and bring it in. If my opponent only had like, you know, two Teferis and one JS or something, this is probably not good enough to justify itself there, but there, you know, first of all, in pioneer, especially the Orzhov NIV hits are terrible.
So this just being like a reasonable card and post board games is already probably gonna put it as at least a one up in the 75. You know, there were a lot of disenchanted effects. We were playing in modern NIV that were kind of bad. Um, Qasali Pridemage. I mean, this just seems like a pretty big upgrade to that.
Um, except for in some corner cases. So yeah, I think this is going to be like a one-off kind of card, you know, I think it is just like a super Disenchant, Dan, more to your point.
Damon Alexander: [00:45:51] What interests me is that this card compliments Vanishing Verse quite effectively one week is advantage versus it never hits artifacts.
This card always hits artifacts. A lot of the most threatening multicolored cards are the Planeswalkers, the Wrenn and Sixes and the Teferis there aren’t that many multicolored creatures that are scary. Obviously there’s like the maths out there, but there aren’t that many,
Daniel Schriever: [00:46:16] this gets Enigmatic incarnation, which the Vanishing Verse can’t get.
David Robertson: [00:46:19] Yeah. So, you know, maybe it’s just one or two of these and, you know, two or three, the other one in your 75 somewhere. And you’re, you’re covering a lot of your bases without having to do a lot of work. And you’re getting cast to Manoj instance, uh, that are doing a lot of this work, the very temple positive place.
Damon Alexander: [00:46:35] Yeah. Now a question for me is, you know, somewhere out there somebody’s Liliana and Gideon’s a blue, white, black lingering souls deck just got upgraded from a tier three deck to tier 2.5. Um, but are there any sort of like white, black decks at their core that, uh, can come out of the woodwork with these upgraded removal spells still no indication,
Daniel Schriever: [00:46:57] just wait five weeks until the Modern Horizons to we’re Almost there another previous season, just around the
corner,
David Robertson: [00:47:07] right onto our next card. Culling Ritual to a black and a green for a sorcery destroy each non land permanent with men of value, two or less, add a black or green for each permanent destroyed this way. Uh, to me, this is a very powerful card. If you have a lot of hits. But, uh, converted, manifest Manoj value too is just very small.
So I actually don’t think this does enough as a sweeper to, to stop pressure on you. If, if that’s its goal, um, it does stop all the threats out of Loris, right? Definitionally, except for Loris itself. All the permanents have to be two or less. Um, but this actually feels like an EDH card to me. Um, most of the men are rocks and people are playing.
An EDH are to manna and this destroys them all. And give you a bunch of men out to maybe cast your own men or rocks after that. So I don’t know that this card is going to make it for me in any, um, constructed format.
Damon Alexander: [00:47:59] There are some serious advantages to this card over a typical sweeper. So one is. Four managed to destroy every non-line permanent, uh, you know, of men who are less well, this, this hits a lot of different things, not as creatures, but second off you design it to the, I probably doesn’t play too many cars with manna value to her less.
So that makes this a complete asymmetric. And furthermore, one of the weaknesses of sweepers is that, you know, you’re tapping out and then you’re pulling just on taps and does something. Uh, but with this, like if you ever make man off of it and can double spell, I feel like you’re going to potentially pull pretty far ahead.
Maybe all you’re doing with that manna is, you know, Assassin’s trophy the thing that you’re putting aside, the battlefield that you missed the first time. Um, and that’d be a little bit sad, but it still might not be, you know, if that stabilizes the game, then maybe you’re not happy with it.
Daniel Schriever: [00:48:48] Well, I’m torn because I initially agreed with what David said, you know, unless I’m getting a million men off this, that’s probably just not good enough.
I don’t know. Yeah. I could get on board with that, Damon.
Damon Alexander: [00:49:00] Yeah, it’s definitely, you know, fringe is not great in every matchup. A lot of cards have been printed, like storming entity that just laugh at this. On the other hand, Lurrus decks really play into this. Maybe that was how they thought Lurrus was fair.
They’re like, well, we have Culling Ritual coming in nine months. Uh, they’ll teach those decks the lesson.
David Robertson: [00:49:21] All right. Now we kind of have a bunch of other removal effects. We kind of have them highlighted here. I’m just going to pick my favorite. You guys can describe yours. mortality spear to a black and a green instant.
This spell costs two less to cast. If you gained life as turn, destroy, target, non land permanent. So this is an effect that they’ve kind of priced out at format before. It’s a format instant, but you can cast it for two. If you meet a pretty easy to, to execute condition, I think this card is really good.
Uh, in a decorative designed to do so it’s just two and a blow, but anything, I mean with no conditions, mano colored, single color and chairman artifacts, it just, I’m just really surprised by how powerful they made the removal in this
Daniel Schriever: [00:50:08] set. Yeah. But if you don’t draw your peace of mind, I mean, you’re just totally out of luck.
David Robertson: [00:50:13] You attack with your Uro, so this is only Casper to man and your salt
Daniel Schriever: [00:50:19] IDOC, and you’re imagining that you didn’t spend any manner to gain the life if that’s the case then. Sure. But if you do have to spend mana to gain life, then it’s like a lot less exciting.
David Robertson: [00:50:29] Sure. Still like four managed to do this effect is about what it’s cost. Right. So yeah
Damon Alexander: [00:50:36]. Binding the Old Gods, uh, or even, you know. Okay. Yeah. I mean, maybe you value the instant speed or potential discount compared to buying the old gods with the useful ramp or, uh, you know, your writing ability compared to Mortality Spear. So there’s some trade offs here and maybe mortality spirit comes out ahead and certain, uh, certain builds.
David Robertson: [00:50:59] I mean, if you have lifeline creature, for instance, on your turn, you’re very likely to be able to cast us. If you cast a lightening helix, uh, out of your new visit deck, then this becomes two men and a destroyed any permanent, except for Lance
Daniel Schriever: [00:51:14] sticking with Witherbloom. I’d like to give a quick shout out to Deadly Brew.
Not because I want to cast this car particularly, but we need more brewing themed cards so that we can have like little mini segments on our show. Like this week’s Deadly Brew. And we turn it over to Damon who like describes some terrible deck that he burned 10 tickets on or something.
Damon Alexander: [00:51:34] I mean, Deadly brew is actually a little interesting because it hits Planeswalkers.
Daniel Schriever: [00:51:39] Yeah, it was kind of like innocent blood. So it was black and source for each player, a sacrifices, a creature or a Plains Walker. So each player you end them. So that could just be a clean one for one. If you happen to have one of those in play, you’re going to two for one yourself. But deadly Brew says that if you do sacrifice a creature or a Plains Walker of your own, you get to return something else, another permanent to your hands.
So you kind of get the card back. So like you’re Stitcher’s supplier on term one, deadly brew on turn two, you sack Stitcher’s supplier. Now you get to bring back any one of the six cars that the Stitcher’s Supplier milled. So it was kind of like a tutor effect.
Damon Alexander: [00:52:13] Yeah. And if you are playing modern, you can have Mishra’s Baubles in your deck that you happen to just get back.
If you have to sacrifice a Noni TB creature. So it has some interesting nuances to this card that make it interesting to me.
David Robertson: [00:52:26] What about you Dan? Anything of interest?
Daniel Schriever: [00:52:29] Oh, besides deadly brew. No. I think those are the two main, I mean, we talked about Rip Apart last week and I just completely agree with what you said at the top, David, that this is going to be the defining feature of this sets.
Just seeing all these cars that they’re not really brew around cards per se. So you might not hear us talk about them that much on the future weeks of this podcast, but they’ll just be like in our decks, there’ll be in other people’s decks. It’s like one of those two Wells. This is nice to have all these options.
I’m really impressed and surprised to see them all here.
David Robertson: [00:52:58] Agreed. All right. Moving on to other spells that are not removal because sometimes you want to win the game or drawing cards. I mean, that’s, that’s fun too. Expressive iteration, expressive iteration, blue, and a red for a sorcery. Look at the top three cards of your library.
Put one of them into your hand, put one of them on the bottom of your library and exile. One of them, you may play the XL card, this turn. So I think this card is really good. If you imagine casting it on turn three. You can draw one of the cards in theory, you would reveal a whatever land you have there and you’d play it.
And then you bought them the least interesting car to use. So it’s just a straight up two for one in that case. And then in the late game, assuming you have enough manna or the cars you reveal are cheap enough, you can cast, uh, maybe both of the cards, the card you draw and the cardiac side of that turn turning your car advantage into, you know, material advantage on the board.
I also just want to highlight that, see the truth is very easily exiled by this. Um, let’s say on turn four, so you can turn this into a two man, a draw to that. One of those cards draws three more cards. So that seems pretty sweet.
Damon Alexander: [00:54:07] Yeah. This is a very neat card in terms of design. I suspect that if you start building a deck in your, your first eight cars, you’re at down our four Expressive iteration, four see the truth.
You’re going to have a super sweet deck that just doesn’t win games.
Daniel Schriever: [00:54:23] Here to win games. We’re here to get sweet, sweet value. Rosemary we’re expressing ourselves. Right. It’s
Damon Alexander: [00:54:30] true. Um, but yeah, I just don’t know what type of Dex would play this. So in a deck like, you know, Canada, blue moon, uh, or just modern blue moon or whatever, you can’t really afford to tap out on turn three to, you know, play this and hit a land drop, um, on that turn three, you need to have your Archmage’s charm up to counter whatever your point is doing.
And you probably just, yeah, you can’t let the shields down until the very late game. So then like if you’re playing, uh, is it tempo deck? That’s where I think this like shines like in the prowess decks where you play this on turn, uh, you know, turn four into a Stormwing entity. That’s, that’s pretty cool. Uh, or just three into a land drop into a prowess creature.
Daniel Schriever: [00:55:13] Hmm. I guess it does have some affinities to light up the stage. A year ago, if you told me I could do this, if I could just get a clean two for one off of a single two minute card, I’d be like, Oh, that’s so exciting. But you know, Chart a Course kind of does that too. And that’s not seeing a ton of play.
This is slightly better. I think you get a little selection as well. So it’s a pretty cool card. I think it’s going to have a similar trajectory to chart a course where some decks are going to have this be their premiere play, to get a little bit of acceleration and velocity and Carter vantage and other decks.
We’ll just ignore it because it doesn’t fit their play pattern of leading men open or whatnot.
David Robertson: [00:55:50] Yeah, I think at pioneer specifically, you’re going to want to pair this with black, where the extra manna or the cars can easily be turned into advantage. So you’re trading your fatal push one, man on very efficiently.
Thoughts is trading for a resource in your opponent’s hand, you know, dread bars. Two men are trading for a three to five minute Planeswalker creature. So that’s a kind of home I think would go in. I agree with Damon. I don’t think this can go on a deck that has a lot of commerce bells or is trying to play, um, Instant speed.
Damon Alexander: [00:56:18] Yeah, it really is too bad. This isn’t an instant because this would be such a fun card. I mean like, will you find a counter spell off of it? That’s cheaper. Will you, you know, hit a cryptic command, but you only have four minutes. You needed to hit man a leak and then you lose to their prime time or whatever.
Um, maybe you’ve been too good, but playing it on their part, us turning you don’t have the chance to hit a land off your second card.
Daniel Schriever: [00:56:40] We’ll never know. Don’t do that. That’s like me trying to activate Magmatic channeler on the opponent’s terms, total disaster. I spent like a whole league trying to do this and
David Robertson: [00:56:52] Nope, well Gigi’s
Damon Alexander: [00:56:54] will play the bonus, got to believe in the heart of the cards.
Daniel Schriever: [00:56:59] So you must have ourselves by making this a sort of, sorry, I’m just putting it that way.
David Robertson: [00:57:04] All right. So we all liked that card, uh, but it’s going to have to go in a deck that can really kind of maximize its use. It’s not just a car that fits in every deck again, uh, the sign of an interest in design. Next up multiple choice on my favorite kind of exam, multiple choice. blue and an ex sorcery.
If X is one scribe one, then draw card. So opt at sorcery speed. If X is two, you may choose a player. They return a creature. They control to its owner’s hand. So it’s opponent’s choice or your choice. If X is three, create a four for blue and red elemental creature token. And if X is four or more, do all of the above.
So you both scribe one draw card, choose a player. They may return a creature that control to its hand, make a four for elemental. So at five manna, where X is four, you are kind of getting like a Mulldrifter, like value play. So what do we think about multiple choice?
Daniel Schriever: [00:58:05] I’m in, I’m totally in only a five minute though, because I want to do it all.
You know, I don’t want to do the other stuff. Give me that sweet four, four.
Damon Alexander: [00:58:16] Yeah. I kind of feel like if it was, uh, effects zero one, two or three, that this car would really shine and not be overpowered actually. But five minutes to get a bunch of decent effects doesn’t seem good enough to me.
Daniel Schriever: [00:58:32] Well, it doesn’t have to be five.
So if you play a cost reducer, you still get to set the X value, add four. So that gives me like a little bit of hope. Like it’s not like you have to actually spend all the Metta. There’s a style of deck that really wants to be like totally insults and sorceries, and there is like kind of a bumper trying to actually win the game.
This is a car that you can possibly play as like a form of, you know, before you’d have to be like shark typhoon, and just hope that the shark gets there or something. Now you get short, Jeffrey went and multiple choice.
David Robertson: [00:59:02] Yeah. It’s, it’s sort of a threat that can trigger major craft is, is sort of what you’re alluding to. Right. Dan.
Daniel Schriever: [00:59:07] Yeah. Or just like, you know, maybe I’m playing pieces of the puzzle or some thing like that, that just wants a certain density of spells. It works nicely with Esika’s Chariot does a follow-up to the cat wagon. Yeah.
David Robertson: [00:59:18] I’m super excited to try this with Kiora as well. Um, I share Damon’s fear that this isn’t going to be good enough, but I want it to be, so it’s certainly a card I will be casting.
I hope for my, uh, tick count sake that it is not 200 pounds.
Damon Alexander: [00:59:34] Yeah. What car? I think it’s interesting with his Pyromancer Ascension, where you want to play only for groves and you need to play wind conditions and you need to play camp trips. And so this card kind of fits into some weird niche in that deck.
David Robertson: [00:59:47] Oh, okay. I like that. And imagine copying the fully kicked version that, that just
Damon Alexander: [00:59:53] feels right. You can take that test home, copied it a few times. How did your friends help you with the, I don’t even know what it analog is in the testing environment. All
David Robertson: [01:00:01] right, our next card Emergent Sequence. So one in a green sorcery searcher library for a basic land card.
Put it onto the battlefield tap. Then shuffle the land becomes a zero, zero green and blue fractal creature. That’s still a land. Put a plus one plus one counter on it for each land. You had entered the battlefield under your control. This turn so often on turn two, let’s say we would play our second land.
We’d cast Emergent Sequence. We’d put our forests into play or Island or whatever tapped. It would get two plus one plus one counters. So what do you think about Emergent Sequence Damon?
Damon Alexander: [01:00:35] It’s interesting. The ability to make a land that is potentially a two to potentially even larger, uh, is cool. Now the, the thing is that the land can trade with a bolt or a fatal push or a stomp, and that’s not great necessarily.
It’s also not terrible that, you know, you’re trading a cheap swell for a cheap spell. But still, I mean, if you’re interest of, uh, you know, ramp and fixing, there’s a reason why Sylvan Caryatid is best in class. On the other hand, if we’re playing a card like the new white mastery, which is toys, all non land permanence, maybe it’s a benefit.
As you mentioned, David, that doesn’t hit Nissa lands. It also doesn’t hit fractal lands.
Daniel Schriever: [01:01:14] Oh, okay. So I had all of these notes prepared and I did not realize that it gets multiple plus one plus one counters reading the card. Um, Phoenix is Dan. This card tricked me at first because as we know whether it’s considered as rampant growth, much too powerful for standard.
And here it’s like you get a ramping growth plus a creature, this ramping growth with upside, like what happened and yet just say, just take a deep breath, read it again. And remember that Dryad Arbor is terrible. And the fact that the land is vulnerable to removal, actually it makes it so much worse than just a clean rampant growth.
So it is more just like an awkward mana dork that happens to count as a land for purposes of like Dryad of the Elysian Grove or whatever, or landfall, well, slow
Damon Alexander: [01:02:00] down there a second. I’ve played a lot of Dryad Arbor in legacy Maverick, and it’s true. Having Dryad Arbor in your opening hand is terrible and you have some, all those hands a lot, but the Green Sun’s Zenith into term one Dryad Arbor is actually one of the most powerful places that that can do.
Daniel Schriever: [01:02:17] You’re describing Green Sun’s Zenith. It has nothing to do with this card.
David Robertson: [01:02:22] Yeah. The one thing I would just highlight is this test some interesting synergies with, uh, Jeskai ascendancy, where you’re really trying to find a man, a creature that can, um, grow and tap, et cetera. In modern. We already have multiple cards that can do this, but this creates a blue or red or white source that can do this.
That’s very unique, um, in pioneer. So if you’re really bent on making the format, tier seven, just guy 70 deck work. You can, this is another way you can generate a Montessori that can be destroyed by stomp. Exactly. All right.
Onto our next card, rushed rebirth black and a green instant choose target creature. When that creature dies, this turn search your library for a creature card with lesser man of value. Put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle Dan, what do think about this card?
Daniel Schriever: [01:03:15] Well, this card was not previewed. It just showed up in the final spoiler reveal, joining the illustrious ranks of cards like Deathrite Shaman that just like weren’t previewed. They just suddenly appeared in the full set spoiler. So I kind of hoped this card was good, but I think it’s actually a trap it’s just too much work, like needing the creature to die. The same turn that you cast Rushed rebirth means that you have to somehow invest either another spell or like some kind of setup.
It gets really, really fidgety doing it on an opponent’s creature would be ideal, but that’s more of a multiplayer thing. I think.
David Robertson: [01:03:49] Yeah. The only thing I’d want to highlight here is Murderous Redcap into Grumgully, and then you can set your triggers so that Grumgully resolves from the rushed rebirth before redcap comes back and goblins does play cards at sacrifice, the format of black goblin, that sacks goblin to do a, your point loses a life (Sling-Gang Lieutenant).
When there’s the one man of red goblin that sacks a goblin to make Amana (Skirk Prospector). Now you have to really F up your man out in your, got one deck to cast this. You have to go full on Jund. So I don’t think it’s worth doing, but I just wanted to highlight that that interaction exists
Daniel Schriever: [01:04:23] well. That’s interesting because I think, I think the Grumgully, the version of goblins would often be Jund colors cause he argued.
David Robertson: [01:04:29] Yeah. I just think the existing versions of goblins are better than this. I, so I agree with you. This is a trap. I just wanted to point out like this is a thing you can do with it.
All right. On to the next Tend the Pests. Tend the Pests, black, green instant as an additional cost to cast the spell, sacrifice a creature.
Create X one, one black and green pest creature tokens with when this creature dies, you gain one life where X is the sacrifice, creatures, power. Damon, what do you think about Tend the Pests?
Damon Alexander: [01:04:56] Yeah. I mean the obvious combo was in legacy with Phyrexian Dreadnought beyond this interesting card. It seems a little bit niche, but like, I’m not sure which texts really are in the game of trading off their creatures for a bunch of pests.
You know, there’s cards like Kroxa, uh, um, no longer Uro where the creatures on the way out the door anyway. And it’s nice to get some free value out of it. But even still like with Kroxa, I, you know, you’re, it’s takes black, black, green, red to do that. How good is six pest to begin with? Maybe it’s pretty good.
Daniel Schriever: [01:05:32] A pest is slightly better than a generic. One, one, it does gain life. I was sure that this effect already existed, but I had to go checking Scryfall. And it turns out that it doesn’t, um, there’s a very similar car called mercy killing, but that’s three men. This is only two men on a, there’s a card called Carrion from Mirage for three men.
Uh, um, Korozda Guildmage. I think the one I was thinking of that, you know, sacrifices, a creature, but that’s for men on a creature. So this is actually a new effect that we have access to at two men. Uh, I’m just not sure if I actually like it. David, what about you? What do you think?
David Robertson: [01:06:06] I think this car does something super powerful. Uh, cutting a man off of something is actually a huge gain when we’re talking about from three to two, um, I have a bunch of interesting cards that might work with it. Yeah. Dreadnought, Kroxa, uh, a Regisaur, Egon, uh, Sea gate stormcaller. This is another card like Neoform, where the sacrifice is part of the cost.
So if you were sacrificing something expensive, you get to double it. Uh, Kraul harpooners is something that comes in with a temporarily high power. Mystic reflection to turn the Pests into something else. IRI triggers off of each of the black creatures, Yorvo triggers off of each of the green creatures.
So yeah, there’s, there’s something here. I, uh, outlined a line here. I don’t think this is worth doing, but turn one, elf, turn to Regisaur, turn three, Mystic reflection, target Regisuar Tend the Pests on turn three, you have seven, seven, six creatures in play, and then you can just extend your right hand to your opponent and that’s all she wrote.
So you have exactly enough cards to do that. Um, I don’t know. I don’t think you actually want to go salt. I just to do that, but tending the pastor, I just saw her, even the, the interaction there was interesting because often your opponent will wait till your upkeep to target Regisaur because they want you to discard.
They want to get value, you know, so they wait, they sack their fetch land and then fatal push it. That allows you to sort of fade that removal with Tend the Pests. So you’re not going down a card. You’re, you’re actually trading 10 the past for their fatal Push. You’re getting seven one ones. And that exchange is incredibly favorable for you.
Damon Alexander: [01:07:37] Yeah, I certainly game States were having seven loans is substantially better than having a single seven, six. So the Rotting Regisaur for combination with this card seems like the best way to start to me.
David Robertson: [01:07:48] So, you know, there’s something there. I don’t know if it’ll quite make it to Dan’s point. We’ve had similar effects before and you know, we haven’t seen people playing them.
So we’ll see, you know, is the croaker thing worth doing the man is tough. Uh, I think Damon is right to highlight that. So it’s up to the brewers in this world to see if they could make it happen. All right. Onto our next, which is the, Prismari mechanic and we’re going to highlight it with Magma Opus. So magma Opus six, a blue and a red for an instant.
It deals for damage divided. As you choose among any number of targets, it taps to target permanence. It creates a four, four blue and red elemental creature token. And you draw two cards. So you are getting a lot, although it costs eight manna and then it has this mechanic. I don’t know if we’ve come up with a term for it yet, but it’s two blue, red hybrid manna discard.
This card create a treasure token, uh, that, that effect is found on a few other cards in the, uh, is it color? So Creative outbursts and elemental masterpiece, both very expensive, uh, incident sorceries that have as a way to sort of turn into a Lotus petal. So what do you guys think about Magna Opus or what are you thinking about this mechanic in general? The discarded turned into a treasure?
Daniel Schriever: [01:09:04] Well, the gimmick here is that these are all enormous spells. They want to have some way to like, get them into the graveyard early so that you can kind of cheekily benefit from it. They printed a creature torrent sculptor that lets you exile your gigantic spell to get a bunch of counters on this Forman award creature.
I kind of expected to see more stuff like that in the set. There, there are a few kind of speculative creatures, there’s an Efreet and a dwarf that the free cast things out of your graveyard, if they survive a turn, but you know, they’re really exciting cards. The ones that lets you immediately cast this expensive spell Mizzix’s mastery comes to mind, which got reprinted in the mystical archive into historic, but that’s not legal and modern.
I’m holding out hope for it that it will be in modern horizons too. And then we can revisit, revisit this idea, but yeah, like putting the magma Opus into your graveyard is not easy to like get it back from the graveyard. I mean, Living Lore is the other one.
David Robertson: [01:10:03] Like I think of Torrential Gearhulk is a card I’m interested in.
Daniel Schriever: [01:10:06] Okay.Yeah, that was
David Robertson: [01:10:07] good. It helps you cast it. I mean, it is a, it is a one turn ramp or a one off ramp.
Daniel Schriever: [01:10:13] Yeah. So that’s one aspect. The second aspect is, okay. So presumably if you’re just following along, you’re going to work hard to set this up and eventually it’ll get paid off with a Magma Opus. It’s going to be so amazing when you actually look at what you get, you get a four for you get to draw two cards.
So that’s kind of like a Mulldrifter. Yes. That’s bigger than Mulldrifter, but probably you weren’t casting other creatures. So you’re not really a beat-down deck. You also deal for damage, but that may or may not be worth the card and you tap two things. So this might just be like a Mulldrifter, and it’s actually not that much better than playing Teferi five and upticking twice.
So if that’s the case, like how hard did you work for it and what did you get paid off with?
Damon Alexander: [01:10:55] Yeah, it’s actually just not that exciting. I make mean there. The Jeskai ultimatum was caused seven, albeit at a difficult casting costs where you draw five, gain five deal five here, you’re drawing two dealing for gaining zero tapping to making a four, four. It just isn’t that big of a, you know, for an amen to spell, I feel like you’re not quite getting eight men worth of results. Um, and so then the question is, well, can you cheat it somehow using this discarded clause? And yeah, I think we’re not, we don’t have the right enablers for that right now.
David Robertson: [01:11:26] Yeah. I guess the one thing that I would highlight is I think this treasure token has a lot of value.
Um, it has value with the, uh, dragon Lord in this color combination. So it turns it into a permanent blue or red or any color source for any instance of sorceries obviously Goldspan dragon allows you to attack that treasure for, to manna. So you could cast any future, um, magma opuses OPI. Um, so I think the treasure talking to may be worth a little bit more in my mind then you guys are giving it credit for, so I’m, I’m kind of interested in just the discard to set up some like unfair plays.
I do agree that at eight man, or you’re just not getting paid off the way you need to for this.
Daniel Schriever: [01:12:06] We talked about gas left Prismari last week. And I’ve been trying to like think of a bill that we’ve been kicking around with some builds on the Faithless Brewing discord for the patrons. And it’s just tough to figure out, like, what are my big payoffs, Gazaleth Prismari only allows you to cast instance and sorceries off of its, you know, special effects.
So you do need something to like really reward you. So I get why these cards exists. And I think like this is going to be the go-to spell in a lot of bills that will be tried. I’m just not sure like how, how strong it is on its own.
David Robertson: [01:12:38] All right. So we are in skeptical, wait and see mode on magma Opus. What about the big gold gallery spell harness infinity.
So this is one black, black, black, green, green, green, instant exchange, your hand and graveyard, and then exile harness, infinity, Damon. What does this card do for you?
Damon Alexander: [01:12:59] Well, it’s fast. My hand gravy, uh, this card is really, really strange, a very power, potentially powerful effect. Your behavior could be, you know, very, very large and your hand could be very small.
And so you gain a lot out of this swap. On the other hand, it seems a little bit out of control. I mean, it takes a lot of setup to make that work, right. And then, uh, you know, one green, green, green, and black, black, black, well, black is the color of Urborg, which makes us at least a little bit more palatable, but even still that’s a difficult casting cost.
Daniel Schriever: [01:13:33] It’s an eye catching card for EDH commander players. The trouble is that if you try to do this in constructed, whether that’s with wilderness reclamation or just like some kind of slow reactive deck that just gradually gets up to seven men on in order to really get paid, you have to have not used your graveyard for something else.
Now, if I’m playing pioneer, I probably eat the graveyard already with the Dig Through Time. And if they know, if you get them one game with this. They can easily turn it off by just attacking the graveyard. So it’s probably just not worth exploring.
David Robertson: [01:14:05] Yeah. I think the ultimatums give you a lot more than this and are probably not actually that much harder to cast.
Uh, I do think the artist spectacular, I guess I just want to highlight the hat particular job by the artists here. All right. Artists, the infinity won’t be harnessing too much of infinity. It sounds like.
All right. The big splashy mythic rare in Simic is body of research. Body of research, green, green, green, blue, blue blue sorcery create a zero, zero green and blue fractal creature token put X plus one plus one counters on it.
Where X is the number of cards in your library. So Dan, other than the misery in paper, where you actually have to physically count your library, uh, every time you cast a body of research, what do you think about this card?
Daniel Schriever: [01:14:54] So I think it’s actually kind of good. Uh, we we’ve had this conversation many times, like, is there such a thing as a creature as 20, 20, 30, 30, 40, 40, if it’s a vanilla creature, that’s just stats can come up with any configuration that’s that’s good enough.
And we’ve always kind of cheekily said, no, you can’t. But on the other hand, that card has never actually existed. There was a silver board of card called infinity elemental. This is that card. So yeah, now that it exists, I kind of want to try it. And it’s like a one punch man, but it’s a fractal. What, what do you think?
Damon Alexander: [01:15:30] Yeah, it seems like you’re spending a little bit too much money for a thing that’s a little bit too weak. I mean, some blockers stop it for any number of turns. Fatal push kills it. Brazen borrower bounces it to fairy bounces it. Uh, you know, this is really quite besides red decks. Any, almost any color combo can handle the fractal quite effortlessly.
And you’re putting a whole lot of resources into it. I mean, six minutes, sorcery speed is no joke.
David Robertson: [01:15:57] Yeah. I think Damon is highlighting, which is important is w weirdly for a six man of card, this is just making a token. So it is still a pushable. And then the token is a fractal, which is a very strange case of it’s actually a base zero, zero.
So you can’t populate as a fact, it doesn’t work with the, uh, the Cadillac, um, to make more of itself the way I think maybe ELC some use is with fling effects. So when we say that, we mean sacrifice a creature unto its power to something thud. It does something like this. There’s a three-minute version that is also a dual face.
So it’s, it’s a red land and then Simic ascendancy. Plus this actually wins on your next upkeep. So that is like a legitimate splinter twin combo if this resolves. Um, so yeah, maybe, maybe something like that to, to take advantage of this card.
Damon Alexander: [01:16:45] Yeah. Or if you can get very into a bunch of pests,
David Robertson: [01:16:50] there we go.
Daniel Schriever: [01:16:52] But less than that, I’m taking anyway, from the cards you listed, David, is that, you know, you just don’t want to have to go to combat with this thing. You want to get the value in some other way. The reason that that hypothetical 2024 is no good is because, you know, just waiting to attack with it. The next turn is just too long, you know, we’re, we’re impatient these days.
It needs to happen immediately. So if it’s like, all right, I’m playing Teferi time Raveler and this is just my random splinter twin till, you know, surprise the body of research on your instep. Um, I might try that, you know, if I’m got like an Altar of dementia, him play or something, play this mill them out.
It’s like a fleeing that you played in advance. Uh, if I’m building a Kasmina, Teferi master of time deck. This might be the card I go to with my finisher when I ultimate Kasmina. We’ll see.
David Robertson: [01:17:37] Yeah. I mean, the fact that it’s a token just makes it vulnerable to lots of cards that normally wouldn’t be good against six drops.
You know, it, it dies to abrupt Decay it gets bounced by Brazen borrower, like Damon said. So a normal six drop is a often resistant to some of these cards, right? It, it’s not just good against bolt. It’s good against portion and decay. This isn’t, this isn’t that.
Daniel Schriever: [01:18:00] All right. One last card in the spells portion of our set review here at Draconic intervention to red, red sorcery, as an additional cost to cast this spell eggs Island incidents, where it’s Ricard from your graveyard, perhaps a Magma Opus kind of intervention, then deals X damage to each non dragon creature, where X is the man of value of the card you exited from a graveyard creatures dealt damage this way, this turn get exiled instead.
And then you also exiled your Draconic intervention. Does this do anything for you, David? I know you’ve been thinking about a Dragon’s build in pioneer.
David Robertson: [01:18:33] Yeah. I think this is fine. You have to build for it though. I don’t think you want to just have this as your generic format of sweeper and you know, you just hope you have a two or three minutes.
Spell in your graveyard. I think you have to be, you know, cycling a Boon of the Wish-Giver or the magma Opus or whatever, to really get paid off on it. I do want to highlight, because again, I always like monkey around with these cards, like the Boros reckoner, um, and similar effects. So this is actually a quite cheap way to do it.
You know, before we were playing the seven minutes sorcery that did $20 creatures, this really lets you cut down on the spell cost of your deck. You know, you can just cycle Opus, cast this. If you have two records and play, you’re doing 16 damage to your opponent, um, that’s maybe worth exploring, but I don’t think you can just play this, play this.
You have to be consciously finding a way to get more value out of it
Daniel Schriever: [01:19:24] reminds me a little bit of battle of and fire, but giants are just like, not a tribe dragons kind of are a tribe as a clean sweeper. Yeah. This is much more likely to actually wipe the board.
Damon Alexander: [01:19:36] Yeah. You have to both want a sweeper and have the set up for it.
David Robertson: [01:19:40] Yeah. So I think you need to be doing something kind of proactive where this has benefiting you. If you’re, if it’s all dragons and it’s functioning as like a full plague wind, this still seems like maybe it’d be more of a sideboard card, but then do you have the main board cards that you’re putting into your graveyard to make this a good sidebar card?
So it’s kind of in a weird space, I think,
Damon Alexander: [01:19:58] yeah, we already have storm’s Wrath format, and that has generally speaking the positive of hitting Planeswalkers too and dragons for what it’s worth. And also that car doesn’t require any setup, but this card, it can go much bigger if you have a, you know, a Magma Opus.
Daniel Schriever: [01:20:12] So that’s an awful lot of spells. We haven’t even talked about any of the creatures from the strict, and I think we’re going to have to come back to that in our Sunday episode, but I’m super impressed just going through these at just the quantity of options and some cars you can chase, chase that dream, get that body of knowledge going.
David Robertson: [01:20:31] Absolutely. So, yeah, we’re going to leave it there. If you, uh, catch up with us again, our Sunday pod is going to discuss all the. Uh, recently spoiled dual face cards, as well as all of the creatures in the set. See you then take care of gentlemen.
Daniel Schriever: [01:20:45] This concludes part two of our brewers guide to StrixHaven tune in on Sunday for the final installments covering creatures hands and double face cards.
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