Modern Horizons 2 Full Set Review, Part 3

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:00:00] You are listening to Faithless Brewing a magic, the gathering podcast for the spike road. Each week, we design new decks for Turnitin play. We put our creations to the test and share our findings on the air. It is preview week and we are full up on exciting cars to build around. This is part three of our brewers guide to Modern Horizons, too.

That’s all coming up on this special edition of the Faithless Brewing podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

hello and welcome to the Faithless Brewing podcast. I am Dan Schriever also known as cavedan online and I am joined by my guy on the left coast. He is Damon Alexander Damon. How’s it going?

Damon Alexander: [00:01:15] Hey, Hey, it was in pursuit of the ultimate west coast experience by being the most west, you can get off on some islands in the kind of north part of the state where you can just cross the border from Canada.

You can wave to your friends in Vancouver and Victoria. Um, and it becomes the Western most part of the U S that isn’t like Alaska or Hawaii.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:01:36] Oh, well, that sounds incredible. Yeah. You sent me a text. It looked like you were just out on the rugged wilds.

Damon Alexander: [00:01:43] Yeah. Well, it’s, you know, compared to backpacking, actually you’re at this island, you have to take a boat there and it drops you off and you’re like, oh, wow.

I guess I need to wait for my boat to come back in three days. But on the other hand, there’s like, you know, a family with 10 kids and there’s like a bunch of boats that kind of more off the, um, the bay. So you’re kind of surrounded by people, but you’re also surviving on your own for three days. So it was kind of a isolated, but crowded

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:02:10] for some reason, I’m reminded of the movie open water too, where they take like a party boat, Alex, and they’re so excited to dive into the pristine waves that they forget to put the letter down and wouldn’t, you know, it there’s sharks in the area. So it wasn’t quite like that.

Damon Alexander: [00:02:26] Uh, no, no. We did see some killer whales also known as orcas, um, on the bell ride out though.

That was pretty sweet, but we did not get out of the boat and get eaten by them. They don’t have really hunt humans to begin with. Um, so no shark experiences.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:02:42] So it’s just Damon and myself for this recording. Uh, I don’t know if David Robertson has been eaten by sharks or not. I hope he hasn’t, but he will be joining us again later this week for her usual, Friday, Sunday episodes, as you may have surmised, this is a bonus recording.

We are going to try to get through some of the massive wall of Modern Horizons to previews. And my gosh, there are just so many of them.

Damon Alexander: [00:03:07] Yeah. We have a lot of cards in our, is it complete spoiled, or are they still coming through?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:03:12] Uh, well it’s Tuesday morning right now. I think they should all be coming out in the next few hours.

Today is the final day of previews, but it was all compressed into essentially a seven day period. The set releases are magic online on Thursday. So there’s not even that usual week to sort of breathe and digest. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:03:31] They just have no appreciation for podcasters.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:03:36] So, how are you feeling about this? That’s just like the whole totality of it from what we’ve seen so far.

Damon Alexander: [00:03:43] Yeah, it’s tricky. I mean, I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but man, this is a lot of cards and a lot of these cards seem high impact. And a lot of high-impact cards seem to be like mythic rares in a set that is already at a high price point.

And you know, all of a sudden you’ll be playing. You’re like boomer, John, and you’re probably going to be, you know, your blood braid elf into a stupid little Arborelle for something. And you’re putting blood Redelfs into a ignoble hierarch, and they hit you for four instead of three. And you look at your Arboretum.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:04:11] So are you worried that the format, as we know, it will become unrecognizable. If these cards are as exciting as playable as format warping, as they look.

Damon Alexander: [00:04:23] It’s hard to say about unplayable in the sense that, um, a lot of these cards seem like great upgrades for, for existing decks. Um, you know, ignoble, hierarch just slots right into John.

Maybe it builds a new deck that plays that card, but I don’t know, no Raghavan goes straight into like a burn deck or whatever. A Dragon’s red champion goes straight into a prowess deck, Siva balloon of sea and sky goes straight into a Murphy Oak deck. And these would be all major upgrades to those decks.

I think, although, you know, sometimes you look at the cards and they seem better than they are. Um, will we see, you know, like a new Enchantress tech come to tier one off the back of Sterling Grove and cards like that, perhaps? Uh, we actually have two good Enchantress effects in the set.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:05:05] Any of the examples you gave, because those are all like really jaw dropping cards, ignoble, hierarch, that junk colored Nobel hierarch.

Raghavan perhaps the most powerful red one job ever printed just on raw stats and ability is Dragon’s raised channeler, another red, one drop. It’s not even clear which of those two is stronger, but you frame them as potentially slotting directly into existing Blex whereas it’s possible. They might not fit into any of those decks that you mentioned even believing in them, or fuck deck has some work to do to like earn her spot, even though she’s a Murphy.

God. Um, but on the other hand, you can’t argue with the totality of the package for each of these cards, they’re the best at what they do. So perhaps they’ll go into new decks and then we’ll just have a meta game with a bunch of decks that didn’t exist before. And that I think would be a resounding success in terms of refreshing the format and giving people more tools to play with.

But on the other hand, it does still lean into that. Well, the format is unrecognizable and the reason these new decks exist is because the, the boomer John’s deck is just obsolete. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:06:11] Yeah. I mean, I guess my personal pace of magic I prefer is if, you know, maybe every new set, like a new deck kind of goes from tier one, tier two, up to tier one, and then maybe like, you know, one or two tier one decks have some, some minor upgrades or whatever.

Um, but if every tier one deck is having like 150 bucks worth of upgrades, this is just kind of an expensive set for us all. Although I guess maybe we’ll play a lot of limited over the summer and cracks and packs and open up all our,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:06:40] yeah, exactly. So maybe we should just dive in, even with this bonus episode, there’s almost no chance that we’re going to get through all the cards.

So Damon and I have chosen a curated selection of our favorites. Uh, we’ll talk through them in our Friday episode, David and I will talk through another chunk of the cards and then we’ll, we’ll pick a few to brew around. I think the first package that we’re going to explore is the madness. Slash discard package with the underworld cookbook and as Maura, no, Martika diced in a colder car.

That’s all coming up later in the week. But before we do that, let’s just, uh, let’s just dive into the cards. So Damon, I think we’ll start off in green.

Damon Alexander: [00:07:21] Yeah. So first up we have one of my favorite cards that I think many people have heard me mentioned on this podcast a lot, or David mentioning is my favorite card.

I guess it’s almost infamous now, but she is titanium protector of our goth three green green for a five, three legendary elemental on ETB return, a land card from your graveyard to the battlefield. And then whenever a land you control is put into a grievance from the battlefield, create a five, three green elemental creature token.

So just a few kinds of play patterns here. One is that if you play this on five man, and you will go to get back here like wasteland, or I guess in modern fetch land or something, your opponent can kill that hiney in response to the trigger. And so you get the land back, but you won’t have a chance to sack it for your free five, three.

On the other hand, if you play Tanja and you already have a fetch land sitting there, you’re putting can bolt her and you sack the land in response. Uh, the sacrificing of a federal land for example, happens as part of the activation. And so they can’t ever respond to this, uh, by . And so you’ll get these board states where.

Titanium looks very innocent, but you play her, you get back, it goes quarter, you go quarter yourself. And all of a sudden you have a, you know, 15 power on the board.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:08:30] Yeah. That’s super exciting. So what I’m hearing from you is that on the one hand to Tanya costs five manna. So she has a high bar to clear all the other hand, does she pass the diastema removal tests?

So you’re saying that that’s that’s to you, like, do you play her with fetch land protection, in which case you’re guaranteed to at least get that second five, three. Or if you just play or when you’re tapped out, you’re still getting a two for one, you know, even if she immediately eats a removal spell, you will get something back from your graveyard.

Although ideally you’ll get a lot of five threes out of the deal.

Damon Alexander: [00:09:04] Yeah. I mean, a lot of my experience with her comes from legacy in Maverick. And first off, I’m the main person who plays her and most other people have moved off of her. But I, I really love having access to her with Greenstone Zenith, uh, which is a car we don’t have any modern, meanwhile legacy has wasteland to keep the game lower on resources where an extra five thrill mental goes a longer way.

That like also plays nice with the reliquary, a car that’s only really good with wasteland available to keep the game, uh, you know, again, a little bit smaller and that like also plays cards like either mother of runes or Sylvan safe keeper, uh, or also even Caracas to keep your titaniums safe. So how she slips into modern will definitely be a little bit different than legacy Maverick.

Anytime I play a Maverick style, green, white deck and modern, I get absolutely roasted. Uh, and I don’t think titanium is the car that fills that gap. I think wasteland is, and that’ll never happen. So we’ll see.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:09:56] Yeah, the lands package and modern looks a little bit different, but it is a proven PowerPoint of the format.

Um, can you put titanium into an existing ramp strategy sort of like you were saying to Tanya works best with fetch lands and a deck lake amulet, Titan isn’t necessarily playing any fetch lands. However, you know, there are some cool combos available. Zero an orb zero man artifact allows you to sacrifice a lands to gain to life.

Um, that has been reprinted in this sets. It is a card you can fetch up off of Urza saga, which is a car we talked about, you know, amulet Dex might want that anyway, because when chapter three of her is a saga resolves, uh, you can go tutor up a zero or one cost artifacts from your deck, usually an ambulance.

But if you put a zero in an orb and a titanium into your emulate deck, now you have access to this titanium. Is there an orb line if the situation arises? So that’s one home, I guess the other home will be a traditional Ponza, which is a deck red, green colors. That’s interested in ramping one, three, five, and we’ve tried other variants where you could ramp with cards like heartless summoning.

I think that would also play very nicely with Catania as well. Five threes, four twos is probably still going to get the opponent dead.

Damon Alexander: [00:11:08] Yeah. Yeah. Ponza titanium doesn’t work well with blood moon, unfortunately. Um, You just get a mountain back.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:11:17] True. All right. You mentioned night of the reliquary and that compels me to talk about our next card here, which has Yaba Maya cradle of growth.

Damon Alexander: [00:11:28] This is a legendary land. Each land is a forest in addition to its other land types. So this is the exact same template as  that makes all your land swamps. In fact, it makes all your opponents land swamps. And if you’re playing a non-black deck on MPG, oh, you know how frustrating that can be.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:11:45] There was a funny tweet from Aaron Forsyth, where he said, you know, just a PSA.

If you’re wondering whether we’re going to complete this cycle and have an urban work. And for all the other colors, the answer is no because of Relic at the molten pinnacle boil and whatever the card is that destroys all planes. Is it. Flash fires. It was like, yeah. Well, as long as you, these cars are here, we can not possibly complete this cycle.

Um, and the people in the comments are trolling him. Like, and you could just like on print those cars, we, we don’t need boil in the format. But anyway, yeah. I mean, it’s a cool cycle to exist. Herb org is always kind of the surprising answer for how to do little tricks, whether that’s leaving fetches on cracked, whether that’s increasing your swamp count for like a dread presence.

We’ve used that in the past. Now you apply those same heuristics to the forest land type. And what do you find there are lands that actually benefit a lot from becoming forests. Flagstones of troll. Kira is a notable one. Um, I don’t know if neither the reliquary would be your go-to there, but you could try that.

Arbor elf is another really exciting card with Jada Maya. Now you have the option to turn another land into a forest. So, uh, you know, for example, you could start with the Java Maya and an Arbor elf, maybe your next play and they’ll draw the temple. And now that’s a forest. So you can just untap that with the Arbor elf and play a reality smash around turn five-oh.

Damon Alexander: [00:13:12] So you mean turn to spectrum and turn to turn one Arbor, alfalfa Abbey Maya turned to

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:13:19] exactly it’s y’all so powerful that you’ll feel like it’s turned five, but then your opponent will check the term counter and see that it is in fact turn to my mistake. Yeah, it just gives you a lot more versatility. I think the forest type is, uh, is an underrated land type, uh, Nyssa who shakes the world is another one that counts all your forest.

This is a cool space that has opened up for Maya.

Damon Alexander: [00:13:46] Yeah, and this, uh, certainly, uh, it goes, it goes hard with this card, also Korean ranger, which got printed this set or muscle return forest to your hand, and you have your mind means you can do that with any land you have. Um, and yeah, the thing is with, with this card and  like the cost of adding one to your deck is almost zero.

The cost of adding to deck, you know, they are legendary, so it can go wrong sometimes. Um, but there are decks out there that play for, you know, herb works, for example, dark depths in legacy

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:14:15] is a good point. Whether you went to like brew around the effect because it’s a legendary land. And that does give it a little bit of pause.

You have to weigh the kind of cost benefit of how high as a ceiling when you have this, versus how bad does it feel to just have a blank in your hand.

Damon Alexander: [00:14:30] Yeah. And also you can fix your opponents man on sometimes with these cards.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:14:35] Well, you can give forest walk to, oh, what is the new squirrel general. Okay.

And just, yeah, well it’s all.

Damon Alexander: [00:14:44] It’s a couple of comments with this card I’ve seen where like there’s various green cards that make all forests like one ones or whatever. Uh, there’s there’s a ton of cards. Somebody pointed out one specific card. I forget where it is.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:14:55] Uh, life and limb, I think is what you’re thinking of.

Damon Alexander: [00:14:58] What does that do again?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:15:00] It turns all four us into one, one separate things, and then you can follow up with a plague engineer to turn your opponent’s separate things into zeros, zeros.

Damon Alexander: [00:15:08] Got it. So, so a less fair version of flash fires plus Sarah’s whatever.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:15:14] I mean, if you’re winning an event with life and limb and plate engineer,

Damon Alexander: [00:15:18] it’s true. You do deserve it.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:15:21] You’ve earned that. Let’s jump around a little bit. We’re not going in any particular order, but I think we’ll move on to read and see some of these exciting red Mythics that we can spend our money on.

Damon Alexander: [00:15:35] Yeah. So the splashiest one of these was only recently spoiled and it is fury, not the tank movie featuring Brad Pitt, but rather a three-year red, red three-three elemental incarnation with double strike and on ETB deals for damage to defined as he choose among any number of target features and or Planeswalkers with the evoke XLR red card from your hand.

So this is part of the cycle, including grief and subtlety. So now we know what the red one is a couple of kind of rules comments. One is that divided as you choose among any number of target features and, or Planeswalkers, this card is not like flame Don cava. You can simply select zero targets and it will deal for damage.

Uh, just not divide it anywhere.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:16:19] Yeah. I think that’s huge. And that’s not obvious from the first reading of the card. I know I misread that and we had to kind of sort it out with the help of judge Rob and our discord. So you’re not going to get caught with this being on castable.

Damon Alexander: [00:16:34] Right. Right. So do you think this card is like absolutely busted?

I mean, this is a sort of reprint of pirate Kinesis, which was an instant, and this is a creature, a, this one hits Planeswalkers, but otherwise they deal for damaged divide as you choose among, uh, creatures.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:16:52] Yeah. I’m leaning on busted. I think this card is going to be a little bit oppressive in the modern formats, but it’s going to be successful at suppressing creature agro in the same way that plague engineer is where playing engineer is not seen in high numbers.

Like if you’re just counting on how many times this playing engineer appear in a deck, it’s not that many, but it does give people pause from like leaning too hard on a strategy like elves or humans, just knowing that black decks could completely wreck you with a single card. Um, we’ve already seen that kind of pressure exerted by cars like lava, dart and Wrenn and Six pushing one toughness out of the format.

Now with this newest cycle fury of the white one, the solitude, the blue one subtlety, all three of those punished specifically creatures. And I think this, this red one looks fantastic to me. So I think that just these forces combined are going to make it much, much, much less attractive to try to spend your first one, two or three turns, adding creatures to the board.

Damon Alexander: [00:17:52] Yeah, on the other hand, uh, this card, because it’s not an instant on like power Kinesis is worse against a card like ether vial, although it’s better. It’s the card like  so it kind of has some pros and cons there. Um, like for example, humans, if they go turn one violin to some sort of hierarchy champion Taleo, Lieutenant draw, you may actually not have a great window to actually, um, evoke out your fury.

Now you can always just hard cast it later on and probably still at least plank one of the creatures down.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:18:22] So I’ve seen mixed reactions, a little bit of a tepid response in some corners of the internets. Some people are saying it’s just pirate. And he says some player, can you say this is not good and legacy for example, but I don’t think that’s really applicable to modern, unlike pretty much all of the other evoke elementals fury is not even necessarily car disadvantage.

You could see yourself easily getting a two for two, maybe even a three for two, depending on what the opponents set up is. And while you might say, oh, that’s just the same thing as having two removal spells early. It isn’t, it isn’t. Um, for two big reasons, it’s different is that you didn’t spend any memos.

So you can just leave your man up for whatever else you want to do. Arch means his charm and your blue, red deck, or some other permanent. You want to play a it’s like you erased your opponents. First two turns at no temper loss to yourself and not even a card event, just loss. Then once you’ve slowed the game down, the longer the game goes, you have these five drops in your deck that are six power creatures.

That also again, wreck the opponent’s board when they come into place. So you just have access now to so much power. Um, and speed that I think theory of all the elementals upsets me the most, even though I think a lot of people feel like it’s the worst of the cycle. I think it’s one of the best.

Damon Alexander: [00:19:36] Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree that like a two for two play, if you’re on the control role and you just kill your opponents first two creatures by expanding two cards, it feels amazing. It’s even better. You know, if your hand is like two lightning bolts in like a cryptic command or whatever, you know, the bolts are the best cards in your hand, in the early game.

And if he was both of those, but here, if you XL fury plus like your worst red car, like a shatter it’s called smashing or an extra blood moon or something, uh, you’re trading zero Manoj and your worst card. Plus I guess in this case, we’re arguing a fury will be your best card in this situation for your opponents, uh, attempt to get out early and then you’ll just completely shut it down.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:20:11] Yeah. And red is also the color of cards like seasoned Pyromancer or alluding effects. So if you’re concerned that, you know, you might put fury into your deck and find a matchup where it’s not a helpful card, it’s not even necessarily a big deal. You just get rid of it.

Damon Alexander: [00:20:27] Yeah. Does this credit go on blue moon as a one-off.

It might, you know, they complete anchor the guy’s main deck and it’s good in some match-ups paying on the meta, but like, this is like, and there’s a lot of times where you lose with an anchor of the gods in your hand, you know, you’re dead before you can cast it. Cause there’s a Thalia or any number of things, or the critters just got too big, too fast, or you don’t have double red.

Oh, this card solves a lot of those issues.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:20:52] Theme is in here with a hard hitting journalistic questions, but can this really cut it as a one oven blue moon? Yeah, I would look for Ponza the Mio Bosch reds, uh, any kind of Marty or mid-range deck elementals, for sure. I think, yeah. I think blooming, I think that’s a fine home for it.

Or Emrakul through the breach. You just play more Valiquette awakenings. Yeah. FMRI decks. I think there’s going to be a ton of people playing this card until all of the creature agro decks are gone and there’s no more need for it.

Damon Alexander: [00:21:22] Yeah, of course avoid mirror shuts down the evoke part. But on the other hand, void mirror will get laughed at when you pay five manna for it.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:21:31] Right. I mean, that’s the most tilting thing for me about this cycle is that well, either free spells and I’ve already had mixed feelings about that, but B the creature half is on rate. It’s all on rate and it’s like, better at what it does than any existing creature. Even if it didn’t have evoke this, wasn’t true

Damon Alexander: [00:21:46] is a bearing Lori bringer,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:21:49] uh, on rates. So not better.

Damon Alexander: [00:21:52] Yeah, it seems. Yeah, it seems about as good as Gloria bringer. You can kind of split up your damage a little bit better. Um, but it’s not a four, four flier glimmering. Can I come in and do eight to a plant’s Walker and a creature?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:22:05] All right. Let’s move on and look at a few of the creatures that might get eaten by fury in the near future.

Damon Alexander: [00:22:12] Yeah. Or cast your point is fury in the case of Raghavan nimble pilfer, a single read for eight to one monkey pirate who is legendary, fresh off of  assistance. We’re familiar with his two, one monkey, but what does that do on its own? Well, when reg Yvan deals combat damage to a player, create a treasure token and exile the top card of that player’s library until an attorney may cast that card.

And it also has dash for one and a red where it comes in with haste and goes back to turn your hand at end of turn. So this is just, let’s just go, let’s just go through this once more, whenever you do a combat match to a, a player. So you go to turn on a ragged van, you attack your opponent on turn two, they have no blockers, or you bolted their blocker.

It hits you make a treasure token and exile the top part of your opponent’s library. And you may cast that card, not play it so you don’t get land drops off of it. You’ll just have to be happy with your treasure as far as manna goes. But is that crazy, Dan?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:23:09] I mean, it certainly feels crazy. I would have been happy with either of those two effects, either the treasurer or the card.

And you’re telling me, I get both.

Damon Alexander: [00:23:18] Yeah. I saw Todd Anderson tweet that like, is this car better than tread heart archivist and legacy? And it’s like, maybe, yeah. I mean, you hit your opponent, you make a treasury exile there ponder, you know, you don’t even catch your own ponder. You’re catching their ponder

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:23:32] and you don’t even have to cast a ponder. You don’t even have to hit you. You exile their land, you get a treasurer. And now you’re just way ahead. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:23:39] Yeah. Even if they brainstorm and response, put a bad card on top, like a land so that you, you miss, you still get a treasure. That’s kind of crazy. Like, it feels like if you don’t kill this car and turn one, you’re going to lose the game.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:23:54] I see. I can definitely see that, um, legacy as a format, of course, where  was banned. So powerful that it’s banned, whereas it hasn’t really cut it in any formats like modern or pioneers since then. Although it’s making some waves, making waves in both modern and pioneer. Um, when you take a two drop like arsonists and give a similar or, or perhaps even more powerful effect on a one drop it’s definitely cause for concern.

Now, the other question is, does this stack up to other red one drops? If we’re looking at a deck like burn or is a blitz, which is probably the STR deck and the meta-game right now, if you’re comparing this head-to-head with monastery Swiftspear Soul-Scar image is Raghavan winning any of those fights, will it be kind of taking their jobs or is Raghavan going to be doing his own thing in a different deck?

Damon Alexander: [00:24:47] It’s in Australia, you know, head-to-head fight Swiftspear beats Raghavan, um, or at least ties with it. And if there’s lava darts flying, flying around then rag event definitely looks a little bit silly, but the thing is that. Raggedy van, I feel like can lead to, you know, explosive turn three, turned four winds a lot better than Swiftspear can perhaps with the help of Swiftspear, you know, maybe in the same deck where between the treasure, and if you had any sort of spell off your opponent and extra prowess trigger, maybe even a good spell that you can actually use.

You know, what, if there’s all like a running six or a blood-brain alpha or something, I mean, it’s post combat blood rate elf, but, um, at the point that you start getting your, your second rag event hit, you’re going to have access to three, four mana. Um, you’ll have to treasure, so it could be any color. So all of a sudden now you’re pronounced to be playing a really weird deck where the number of hits that are useful for you are really low.

You know, maybe they’re playing some sort of  on life.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:25:42] Yeah. My feeling is that they, they don’t go into the same style of deck Swiftspear or any of the prowess creatures and regular van. I do think it’s more of an organist style card. I think GenEd would be an interesting home ignoble hierarch, which is a card that we’ve, we’ve touched on it.

You could put that into a John deck. If you lead on turn one hierarch now on your second tour and you have enough Manoj to thought sees them, you still have too many leftover to dash the ragga van in, um, we shouldn’t overlook this dash ability, making it a pretty exciting top deck on an empty board. And then the John Deere deck is in a position to continue to like clear the way.

I mean, you could even do that line. I said, term one ignoble hierarchy, turn to thought. So you use plus dash and you could just use the treasurer to recast. Raghavan actually you can’t because that goes back to the end step, but next term, so yeah, it’s possible that like, that’s going to be like a new power package for any of these attrition style decks where reg van is in the darker confidant role.

Damon Alexander: [00:26:45] Yeah. My concern here is that reg seems to be good against, um, control. I mean, they have to kill it or else they’re going to fall behind. They can’t afford to let you get treasure sinks are double spelling. It’s good against combo, because again, it helps ramp you while being, you know, as good as a clock, as any to drop besides perhaps goblin guide.

Uh, and it’s probably pretty good against agro in the sense that they’re gonna be playing cards that are useful for you to cast. And if you’re playing a red duck, you can probably clear the way for this to hit. And so cards would have like a pretty good spread against all the major meta archetypes or whatever, a one level above archetype, uh, just the broad swath of decks.

You know, there’s, there’s certain texts within there, the cast lava’s art or whatever, where this isn’t so good. But if it’s seems to be decent on the whole, as a tournament, play against almost any Zack, otherwise that, that is a little bit, uh, it makes me a little bit nervous.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:27:39] Yeah. Now we are a brewing podcasts. So I have to confess my first thoughts were, oh, this is a treasurer maker for my mega day. Yes, sure. Is mocks Amber enabler hero’s blade deck, but that mystically, um, this is just going to be, uh, into your ducks and we can also play around with it and the silly stuff. Pirate tribal.

Damon Alexander: [00:28:01] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s true. Mark Samberg does get pushed a little bit every time cards like this come out

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:28:08] very much. So, all right, let’s go up the curve. One slots, the theme in blue and red for Modern Horizons two as a draft format is delirium and that’s kind of strange cause delirium. I don’t think of that as an Izzet mechanic, but they gave us two attractive creatures in red that, that both power up when you have four or more card types in your graveyard.

So maybe we can just get them out there together. The blood-brain Marauder and the Dragon’s rage Chandler.

Damon Alexander: [00:28:37] Yeah. So the Marauder is one in a red for a three, one that can’t block. And on delirious, I am, it has cascade. So like one of the cheaper cascades bills we’ve ever seen dragons rates, or is one read for a one-on-one when you cast a non Peter spell surveil one and on delirium, it gets plus two plus two has flying and attacks each combat if able.

So it becomes a three-three flier that has to attack. So these cards are clearly both aggressively tilted, you know, one camp block, one can only attack and potentially a one read for a three-three flyer. Uh, that’s kind of like what delver secret stuff. Uh, and one is, well, it actually seems like a different card.

And in constructed to me, you know, a very different card, it seems like you’re doing this to enable, uh, ancestral visions or crashing

versus like blur by Marotta cascade into lightning bolt.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:29:36] I mean, I think those are the two natural homes for it. Are we trying to get something specific, like a free spell or are we just trying to get a little bit of value for a slightly quicker Abbott of Carol keep and I’m no fan of Abbott of karaoke.

So if you’re telling me that I can guarantee a hits and also cast that spell. Yeah. I’m almost willing to, to work for the blood-brain Marauder, even in a aggressive red deck. Um, but that said, that’s the archetype where the competition is stiffest and where delirium seems hardest to achieve.

Damon Alexander: [00:30:08] I think with delirium is one card is great with Juliet.

I mean, that is Mishra’s Bauble and another card is great with two drops and that is Lurrus the dream Dan and our card is great with bobble and that has Lurrus the dream den. And so this makes me feel like  could also belong in, uh, these Lurrus, um, you know, shadow type decks where you play blood-brain Marauder into, uh, you know, like a death shadow or something.

You’re punting. It kills the Marauder because it’s a three one that he played early. You later recast it with Lurrus out.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:30:40] Oh, right. So you’ll get the cascade casts trigger because Lurrus casts from the graveyard.

Damon Alexander: [00:30:48] Right. And the thing with those decks is kind of weird, but they sometimes just don’t have good turn to plays because their opponents have 20 life and they have like a scourge of the sky.

Claves in hand now playing a to read three. One is perhaps sufficiently poor that even if you have the hint of getting cascade later, the deck wouldn’t want to do it. We’ll have to see.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:31:08] Yeah. The other home you mentioned would be a free spells deck. Starlets agent is the big get for vets. So I’ve seen a lot of people already proposing Charlotte’s agent lists and I’m sure we’ll be testing our own as well.

Does Blubrry Marauder fit into that strategy? It is the cheapest cascade spell. Um, on the other hand, I don’t know how to get delirium easily without Mishra’s Bauble and that’s not going to work with trying to cascade into a guaranteed crushing footfall, for example. Right. Right. You have to come up with something.

I’m not saying it can’t be done. You know, fetch land is obviously the first thing you want to do then maybe you, you cycle something or who knows, but that’ll require a little bit of thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe John with it’s like a mini blood rate elf that only cast thought CS and ignoble. Hierarch only finds reg.

That’s still pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Chandler, on the other hand, let’s talk about the channeler for a minute. Is this like the new delver of secrets?

Damon Alexander: [00:32:15] Yeah, this is one of the cards that if there’s going to be either like an, I won’t make baby call it a new archetype, but a substantial rework of an existing archetype.

It might be this card where some sort of blue, red, or Grixis delver deck. Uh, maybe they don’t play Delvin. This play, this, this card seems a lot more reliable if you’re playing cards like thoughts, scour, and Mishra’s, Bauble

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:32:36] how powerful is whenever you cast the non creature spell surveil one, obviously that’s not prowess.

It’s the same trigger, but instead of getting a power boost, you’re getting a selection. You’re getting the ability to fill up your graveyard.

Damon Alexander: [00:32:51] I think very powerful on this card, because first off it feeds its own delirium. A second off. It just helps you build a graveyard for a card like Gurmeet Gangler, or like a Colgan’s command or something, or a Snapcaster MEJ third off, you know, surveil one just helps you smooth out your draw.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:33:10] Should I think of that as just the same as spry one? Or do you feel like surveil is a step above scribe? Like how close is it to drawing a card?

Damon Alexander: [00:33:19] Well, in the context, we have a carpet delirium in play. It’s definitely a lot better than sky. And with this car that will always be the case until of course you hit the limit more where it becomes more marginal.

But I think that those, those benefits in this type of deck are large enough. I mean, these extra already, you know, playing, playing thought scour, right? They love to fill their grades. Yeah. One is also good at flipping delver of secrets where you can cast a couple of canned trips in your upkeep. Well, cannabis are weird because the surveil one results before the cancer trips.

So you need a cast leg, a bolt, or a fatal push to help dig towards the spell on top.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:33:55] Interesting. I didn’t even think of that. Yeah. I think this is a really exciting printing

Damon Alexander: [00:34:01] Serum Visions, a lot better of a canned trip where you get a surveil one and then draw a card and then scribe too. Hmm. You know, if you’re looking to kind of fill up your graveyard or line things up for a delver of secrets, uh, you’re gonna want to play a lot of cheap cards.

Of course, then I’ll draw the trunk comms and they play chalice on zero, but we have our own cards against the drowsy Tron. Now play void mirror, both parts, totally locked out, got a time into the Eldrazi Tron draw bracket of the Jeep.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:34:31] The game has only resolved when the player controlling the void mirror attempts to cast a spell into it and gets the queued. All right. Let’s move on to the blue.

Damon Alexander: [00:34:43] Yeah. So first up we have via loon of sea and sky. There may be a different way to pronounce that a one blue blue for a legendary Murph folk God with three, four stats, indestructible, as long as you control at least two other Murphy folk, whenever it’s violent attacks at draw card.

And then lastly, other more, fuck you control have ward one, which is, you know, half the Frostline effect, where if it becomes a target of a speller building patrols counter, unless they pay one or a full unsettled Marriner effect

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:35:15] while we’re on the subject of Murphy. Can we read the tide shaper?

Damon Alexander: [00:35:19] Yeah. This is blue for a one-on-one Murphy wizard with kicker one, uh, on ETB.

If it was kicked, target land becomes an island for as long as Thai shaper is on the battlefield and it gets plus one plus one, as long as the opponent controls an island. So it’s kind of like a spreading seize on a stick.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:35:37] Yeah. AmeriFlux support. My goodness. The Murph deck is a little bit of a meme and yet it does well enough in the hands of its most dedicated pilots.

I wasn’t expecting a Murphy to get four different cards from Modern Horizons. Two, we already talked about Rashad and dockhand hand last week. Um, and we talked about subtlety as well. And I felt like subtlety would be very much at home in a kind of a creature based tribal deck in blue. So those are already competing for slots.

Now we have a dedicated Merkel gardens, violin, just the powerful three drop and tide shaper, which I think I saw NICU saying that he’s planning to just permanently retire as spreading seeds and play tight shaper instead.

Damon Alexander: [00:36:20] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, spreading seeds versus tight shaper, spreading sheets is better in some sort of like control Jeskai wildfire, Decker or whatever, just because they take prefers to be able to draw a card and keep the gas flowing.

But Murphy doesn’t care about that. They’re just trying to kill the opponent. And the more morphic you get on the board, the quicker your Lord of Atlantis is stack up and lead to a dead opponent. This card’s downside is it’s easier to attack than a spreading sees, you know, disenchanting and spreading sees always feels terrible.

Uh, whereas this card, if you bolt it, you get your land back. But I think that on the whole, that still comes out favorably from our folk.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:36:56] Yeah. So what should we expect from  of sea and sky?

Damon Alexander: [00:37:02] This card seems pretty strong to me. Uh, one thing that can go wrong with Murphy, cause first off Murphy plays a really good tempo game, but sometimes their creatures just get killed.

Uh, this card is, is good against sweepers because if you have two other more folk, at least violin will survive. Uh, it’s good recovering from sweepers because when you attack, you draw a card, just not attack and deal damage, just attack you, draw a card. And lastly, it’s also good, uh, at bogging the game down for your tempo game to shine because now if your points as well, smiling’s, indestructable let me at least kill the other Murphy can play so I can kill us violin.

Uh, they have ward one and so it becomes really hard for opponent to double spell into that.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:37:45] I feel like I’m reading this car for the first time and now it scares me a little bit. Yeah, that sounds incredibly powerful.

Damon Alexander: [00:37:53] Yeah, the, the bare case against it is that it is a three manna for just sort of a bundle of stats.

It doesn’t really pump your other Murphy folk. And so it takes a little bit of time to prophet after it comes into play. And so if you’re like hard casting this versus off of a vial, it might be so, so, um, meanwhile path’s exile does exist. There’s also the, you know, the, the new white card we’ll get to solitude, which can exile.

And so there are some downsides to this card. Maybe Terminus comes back and Vogue, and that just flips the board and it doesn’t care about award or indestructable, but on the whole, it seems to require a bunch of specialized answers to deal with it properly.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:38:32] Yeah. Anytime you’ve seen a dried of the Elysian Grove on the other side of the battlefields, which happens all the time now in modern, and you look at your hand, then it’s got like a lightning bolt and a fatal push, but you don’t have a fetch land.

It’s actually kind of annoying to kill these three CMC four toughness creatures. Most techs don’t play that many cars that can do it. Now, maybe that will shift, you know, maybe the Metta is going to all be solitude ducks from now on. And these creature decks will just get gobbled up. The other point I just want to mention is that having played briefly with the card Torin sculptor from the screen, Strixhaven word is that easy mechanic to forgets the game allows you to target creatures with word, word trigger after it’s been targeted.

So this applies in both online and paper. You can like point something at a Murphy look, and then the opponent will say, okay, it’s trigger word. Would you like to pay? And then you’ll realize that you just forgot it was there. And, uh, you, you will feel bad as you signed the match slip. So read the cards.

Remember you might have to pay extra. All right. Shifting gears away from the sort of tier, well, I don’t know, is morphine going to be tier away from the known to the unknown. Just a few pet cards. I just want to quick give a quick shout out to so tide shaper is a one drop with kicker and you heard me talking about flame tongue year laying last week.

This is the dream for my kicker deck. A one drop that you can kick for one man out that actually does a little bit of something is perfect for the use of Drake’s strategies. So while everyone’s out there bashing each other with a ragged vans, I will most likely be playing a Brewster Drake’s on turn one tide shaper on turn to make a Drake and just see where that takes me.

Also want to give a quick shout out to two seal of removal. This is the enchantment for a single blue it’s on someone that you pay for in advance on like a prepaid phone card. This was on my Modern Horizons to wishlist, and I didn’t think it was a card that anyone else cared about, but I’m really happy to see that.

But with it and seal of cleansing, uh, have been printed in Modern Horizons too.

Damon Alexander: [00:40:39] Yeah. Cards like this, by the way, are good delirium enablers. Although Sila fire was already present in modern. As perhaps the best of this cycle, uh, and the type of deck that would play dragons, rage Chandler.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:40:51] Yeah. Although I think a Sealy removal is just better on balance.

Um, because seal of fire really depends on the opponents to provide something of value for Sila fire to remove their face. Well, I mean, I guess it’s the only removal you can supply something valuable. You can just play a high value creature, like a Dragon’s race channeler. Now you’re a sealer removal is always going to be at least a protection spell, um, for your dragons race Chandler for your death’s shadow for your Lurrus.

I mean, this is kind of a nightmare with Lurrus. They’ll just keep bouncing each

Damon Alexander: [00:41:24] that’s true. Or even with the, the free cycle of a vote creatures, you can bounce it in response to the evoke trigger and reevaluate it, or just save it for when you can. Hardcast it.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:41:35] Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s really good.

It even defends against, uh, through the breach. Emrakul this is an extremely versatile card. It might go in the Enchantress deck. Now that that deck has more support. So definitely this is a car to keep an eye on and just pick up a place that while they’re cheap

Damon Alexander: [00:41:51] seal of removal

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:41:54] and specking hard on seal specking hard on our roof, the Driggs that’s fair to say, get your foil rooster. Drake’s now, uh, last card that’s I want to give a quick nod to is hard evidence. Single blue for is sorcery. Create an oh three blue crab creates her token investigate.

Damon Alexander: [00:42:21] I love the art in this cartridge. It was like a skull on a beach with some trees and some storm clouds in the background and like a little crab, just kind of wandering towards the skull.

Although how did crab investigate? Cause they move sideways. Right. But if they want to approach something while looking at it, they’d have to scuttle and then turn and then scuttle and then turn.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:42:41] You’re like all these murder mystery tropes where like a hermit crab, scuttles up with the telltale skull of the deceased or something and was like, maybe that’s just in my head.

Damon Alexander: [00:42:54] I certainly don’t read the types of books, Dan, but there’s a book out there for everybody.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:43:00] All right. So what is there to like about hard evidence? Well, it combines two different things that we haven’t seen before. One is a single blue sorcery that makes a reasonable token. That effect doesn’t actually exist.

Now, there, there are single blue, oh fours or fives even you could play, but if you want a spell effects, Um, blue is a color that often cares about spells. Now you have an option to get a reasonable blocker while you’re setting up whatever else you’re trying to do, whether that’s Phoenix. Um, maybe you’re just trying to get value off pieces of the puzzle.

I don’t really know. Uh, maybe you’re a polymorph deck that wants a creature that isn’t actually a creature type card. So I’m already like pretty interested just for that effect on top of that, they gave it investigate. This is a single blue card that investigates, which is also very rare. You have now I believe with three but inspector.

So the total package here is just stunning and how generous they were. I’m like excited. I’m also a little bit offended at just how obsolete it makes all the other cards that you might look to. But, um, you know, just take out a little bit on the whole, uh, happiness.

Damon Alexander: [00:44:04] I love this card. I think it’s that it’s not like too pushy. It feels like it’s either a blue Thrivent inspector with some minor downside because the one power feminine spectrum means you can, for example, attack it to ferry a time reveler after a down take and kill it. Just any number of little things. We pressure planes Walker. Your opponent comes up all the time.

On the other hand, uh, this is a spell, which is a little bit useful, but it’s also like a blue arboreal Grazer where that oh three, just certain blocks, goblin guides. While you have time to cast your shape a new, or even just crack the clue to draw card.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:44:37] Well, if that’s the case, maybe we’re playing a lot of copies of this just as a defensive player.

Damon Alexander: [00:44:42] Yeah, unlike Grazer, it’s not actually terrible in late game, uh, which is a pretty big effect. Obviously it doesn’t provide the Mark’s diamond effect like razor, where you get crazy ramp. Um,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:44:55] am I hearing one of them blue moon or are we not quite that high on it?

Damon Alexander: [00:45:00] Yeah, it’s it part? I mean, it’s interesting. I just simply making a blocker, a trigger thing in the ice.

I mean, you’d probably rather just play a canned trip that doesn’t require, you know, two and a blue total. Um, I’m always down to play one of them bloom. Let’s put it that way

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:45:18] worth mentioning also that the blue-green draft archetype is miscellaneous tokens. And if you wonder what that means, there’s a series of cards that just provide like one of two or three different styles of tokens.

And then, you know, you, you have to figure out how to solve that puzzle, how to get paid on that hard evidence provides two different tokens in a single card, uh, for the cheapest medicals possible. So kudos to whoever designed this one. And I look forward to seeing what it can do.

Damon Alexander: [00:45:48] Yeah. Out of the blue cards into an assembly of white cards, uh, or just when we flight from now, I think Dan, Dave will come back with more later, we have karmic guide.

Uh, this is a new to modern, but not new to our magic careers. Three white white for a two to angel spirit with flying pro-black echo three white whites. You have to repay three white, white at the beginning of your next upkeep. Uh, unless you pay the echo cost and then on ETB return, target future cards from your graveyard to the battlefield.

So the echo on this card is a very useful mechanic for making it balanced in limited and almost completely immaterial.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:46:29] So I think of karmic guide as a combo piece. Yeah. So we’re never playing this for value, unless we’re a combo deck that has been disrupted

Damon Alexander: [00:46:39] karmic guide, bring back. My title is tracker.

Yeah. That doesn’t really happen. Karmic guide typically goes infinite. There’s a number of, uh, like EDH style combos, where it involves like a protean Hulk, or any number of, uh, sack outlets, things like that, or revel arcs. I don’t really remember the Campbell’s off the top of my head. They’re always like three or four cards kind of clunky, but, uh, surprisingly easy to assemble, kind of watch the person kind of do their thing over webcam and just sort of zone out and just assume it works.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:47:16] Come to mind are Kiki Jiechi plus restoration angel, where if those are in your graveyard, say, because you tried to combo off once already and, and got disrupted karma guide can come in, get Kiki Tiki back, and then you, what do you do? You copy? The karma guide your copy, Kiki, Kiki. I don’t remember exactly.

Um, it gets both of them back and then you’re able to combo off,

Damon Alexander: [00:47:42] I guess you can get them back in either order.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:47:45] Uh, well, you can’t get back restoration angel because that doesn’t blink angels. Oh,

Damon Alexander: [00:47:50] Carmen has an angel. Okay. So you can keep your

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:47:52] cheeky and I just forgot to write this down earlier. That’s one of the combo.

Damon Alexander: [00:47:57] Yeah, you were. You, you get back Kiki, Kiki, copy, comrade guide, karma guide, bring back resto, resto, flicker, Kiki, Kiki, tap, copy, resto, new resto flicker Kiki.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:48:10] Um, the other combo is with protein Hulk where protein aholic, when it dies, you’re able to search your deck for up to six CMC where the creatures and put them directly into place.

So then it’s just a matter of choosing your preferred, a whole package that ends the game immediately. Now, karmic guide. Can be part of your first hook delivery box. Essentially it brings back the protein and Hulk. And then with your extra CMC, you you’ve gone to fetch a SAC outlets like a carrion feeder or a viscera seer or something like that.

Then you get to protein hook again. And the second protein hook gets revel arc or something else, which then loops with the karmic guide. All of which is to say, there’s a good chance that if your opponent plays a karma guide, you’re probably just dead. You can let them talk through it, but yeah, take Damon’s advice.

Web D H get a snack, grab a Snickers and just let them do their thing. So are you happy to see this in the format?

Damon Alexander: [00:49:14] Not particularly, uh, it feels like the combos that enables are not the best combos for constructed play. There is something nice about the simple combos, uh, you know, there’s a spectrum all the way from.

Kiki GQ, resto, where are you at the splinter twin combos up to like KCI type combos that are non-deterministic or even like egg style. And those combos I think are really poor for constructed play karma. Kite at least is better than the Heliod spike theater combo, where it’s not an infinite. It doesn’t really typically enable infinite life.

Um, but the crumbles do wind up being like kind of complex. And so it rewards players that understand versus like the Sarah sear line. If you kill a Sarah Sierra in response, maybe there’s like a window to stop them stacking the protein hall cause it comes back. Uh, and so you have to kind of really understand them all to interact with them properly.

And who wants to spend their life understanding various karmic guide combos. It maybe a lot of us actually

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:50:13] I’m a little annoyed that they also brought back Imperioli recruiter to just make this specific Tiki Tiki deck converge on that toolbox top end. I guess they felt like the deck needed the help.

I’m not convinced that it did. And like there’s some players notably be the MPG player, Caruso who just continually put up great results with Kiki using the existing tools. But this will certainly be an upgrade. I know Debbie has a minimus, a friend of the pod is also eagerly licking his chops to get this one into his decks.

Damon Alexander: [00:50:43] Yeah. Of the decks. If it’s into are a little bit different than the existing, like pester Mike Kiki decks, those ones feel more like combo control, where they have like the Kiki pastor Mike combos, but mostly otherwise there’s control cards come and God wants to sit in a higher creature density deck as does Imperial recruiter.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:51:01] Oh yeah. That’s the one I meant, I think pester my version is just bad. Yeah. Hmm. All right. Let’s step over to black. We have the arc-on of cruelty.

Damon Alexander: [00:51:14] Yeah, this is six black, black for a six, six flying arc-on whenever our kind of cruelty ETBs or attacks, target opponent sacks, a creature or Planeswalker or discards a card and loses three life.

You draw a card and gain three life. The ETB is kind of like a small cruel ultimatum, like a mean ultimatum or something,

but you get it every time and it attacks also. So it feels like it’s extremely hard to race this card. Uh, unlike cruel ultimatum, it actually can kill Planeswalkers. And what excites me about this card is it seems like perhaps one of the better non legendary reanimation targets for unmarked grave, right?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:52:02] So both unmarked grave and persist. This is the combination of in tomb plus ReAnimator, but now at two manna for each of those halves, In order to balance those cars, they, they forced them to find non legendary creatures. So you can’t get gristle brand effectively. That raises the question. What creature are we trying to get?

And Modern Horizons two is attempting to answer that question as well. They gave us this arc-on for an attractive knowledge and dairy, a drop in black. I think in white, you could consider the, um, Sarah Emissary kind of a mini mini Iona effects that gives protection to you and your stuff from a card type of your choice.

I mean, I think that will definitely be the home for this. Is that a win? If you assemble your splinter twin combo of unmarked grave into persists, bring back our kind of cruelty or are you just a little bit ahead at that point?

Damon Alexander: [00:53:02] Yeah, it definitely is clear when I was splinter twin in the sense that it really does not win the game that turn you’re putting on to go to 17 life, give or take, you’ll go to 23 life, give or take.

They’ll just, you know, they discarded card, you draw a card, they sack and creature. So we’re talking like a meaningful, uh, grindy trigger that continues to grind you ahead. A few ratchets of the Giro, the grind wheel every time, but it doesn’t make the wheel spin forever. Like a splinter twin Cabo does. So the question is, is that good enough for a reanimation deck where you jump through these hoops, trying to Dodge all the crap tickers cages or whatever, to get your 66 archine into play.

Uh, but then your opponent plays to ferry down tick, bounce it, or any number of things like that. Um, did it pull you fall off a head that you can recover from that situation? Or is this just not anywhere close to Griselbrand or whatever?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:53:56] Yeah, I feel like it’s not close. I think you can definitely come back from the Orrcon.

Just please seal of removal. It’s the new metal in your, uh, in your crab investigator.

Damon Alexander: [00:54:10] One interesting way to build these texts that I don’t know if it is at all. Good, but what if you’re playing like black, white grief, ephemeral, and you’re putting, it goes a high C live removal. I’m a bounce, their arc-on and then you just a fem rate it.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:54:25] Yeah. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:54:29] Huh. February that you actually are getting up to a cruel ultimatum.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:54:35] Okay. That’s kind of troubling. Yeah. I keep on like, my brain does not accept that you get to draw a card and make them discard on ETB or attack. It’s just so much just the Titan clause plus the Gruul ultimatum. All right. That’s pretty good.

Damon Alexander: [00:54:50] Yeah. Yeah. But we’ll see. I mean, yeah. Dan has raised some good questions about whether that is in fact good enough and it might not be, uh, we have a lot to learn as brewers.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:55:02] Next card up is an old favorite Sterling groove and uncommon from invasion.

Damon Alexander: [00:55:09] Yeah, this is green, white for an enchantment. Other champions you control have shroud one sacrifice Sterling Grove, search your library friend, shaman card revealed, then shuffle and put that card on top.

So I think there’s two fun, little lessons to take away from this card. One is while Dan’s busy buying foil, reus of Drake’s or whatever, I went through my collection and pulled out all my non IRL cards I had from childhood. I had like 10 copies of Serling Grove that were uncommon in invasion. And so it wasn’t like, I was like, you know, some high roller, a little kid, I just opened a live innovation.

Um, and so I got rid of a bunch of them just via like a buy list. And now it’s reprinted and I’m very happy. I did all this. Sometimes they get reprinted and they hold their value even go up.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:55:54] That’s trend for these commander cards is that they just keep going up. I mean, anything that tutors, I hate anything that is an obnoxious prison piece that also tutors you can see why Sterling Grove is a popular card.

Damon Alexander: [00:56:05] Yeah. Although the trends for 2021 is that everything goes up. I mean, if you look at lumber prices, uh, but not Bitcoin, uh, ha sorry, Bitcoin enthusiasts.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:56:16] Wait, is that why cars are getting more expensive because the cards are made from the same stuff as lumber?

Damon Alexander: [00:56:21] I don’t think so. I don’t think that the lumber to cardstock ratio is quite the same as the lumber to like housing, but I don’t know. I actually don’t know how that it could be.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:56:32] Yeah. I mean, wizard has had no choice, small indie company call us. They’re soaring

Damon Alexander: [00:56:37] gave you a Kindles now, I guess.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:56:40] So do you see a competitive future for Sterling Grove?

Damon Alexander: [00:56:44] Yeah. The other, the other lesson from this card is this card is super obnoxious. Eight creates this Enchantress prison structure where.

Your other under shamans have shroud. I mean, what, what does it say? And then what is your putting in to do disenchant you’re Sterling Grove and then you sack it to go find another Sterling Grover, anything like that? Um, so first off it really hurts interaction. I get the chanters, unless it’s like really enchanters targeted removal, like the sweeper and champion sweeper cards, uh, which do exist now in good number.

There are plenty of hate cards against the chanterelles, but nobody shows up two inch, like, you know, a modern OneCare, whatever, with an anti-inflammatory card in their side sideboard. So at least at the start that archetype just doesn’t get attacked that much, this card really goes a long way for that deck.

Uh, not only for just solidifying its game plan against a light interaction, but also if you have some sort of AB combo in your Enchantress deck, or maybe not combo, but just really strong synergy or even in Chandra’s silver bullets, like the card we’ll get to in a second or later on solitary confinement or.

One of the kind of propaganda type effects or any number of other things. This card helps find it. Of course it is doing it. Enlightened tutor style where you go down a card, but in cheddar stacks frequently have 15 cars.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:58:05] Yeah. It’s worth noting that Enchantress as an archetype, doesn’t really exist in modern.

And they’re attempting to fix that in this set, by giving some new tools in chanter, says presence, a reprint from onslaught. It’s two wintergreen and chairmans. Whenever you cast and a chairman draw card, they also gave us this hand of the harvest green white for a one, two enchantment creature that has the enchanters effective.

Whenever you cast an enchantment gain a life draw card, uh, they gave a mandate to work. Sanctum Weaver wanted a green and champion creature. Oh, to tap, add X men of the color of your choice X as the number of achievements you control. So they’re really pushing on this archetype. Probably the biggest difference from previous and shaman effects is that all those cars, I mentioned have the enchantment subtype on them.

So you don’t have that maddening tension that we were dealing with with a citizen champion occurred. That seems like an absolute joke now where it’s like, okay, I want my champion payoffs, but the, you know, they make me decrease my enchantment density just to play this non-indictment payoff. And that’s all a thing of the past.

Now you have plenty of options that come with the enchantment card type that rewards you for just stuffing your deck within shamans.

Damon Alexander: [00:59:20] Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. I’m Weaver. Uh, just briefly, this is like Sarah sanctum. This cartoon seems pretty nuts and Chandra’s stacks. The limit is typically manna in the early turns and this card really helps you get around that bend.

Meanwhile, Uh, what is the card? Uh, sit this to manna is really the right amount for Enchantress. Uh, our GoLean Chandra’s is clearly best in class and remains to this day, uh, being one in a green for an O one with shroud. So sit, this will just die to a bolt or a push, but still it comes down to the right time where they, they have to have that right on hand, or you’re turned three.

What you’ll just go nuts. Then of course, the cheddar says presence solves the bolt push problem, but it is a little bit slower. Uh, and again, that’s highlights why Arcata and Sanders is best in class, but still, um, that card is too good for modern. Clearly, uh, these cards are probably not too good for modern, but they all seem to provide a very strong package,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:00:17] a small correction to what I said earlier about there not being an enchanter stuck in modern, there is one enchantment deck that’s actually pretty good.

And that is the etic medic incarnation deck, uh, that we’ve seen in modern as well as pioneer. That deck is extremely powerful. When I think medic incarnation is in play. If reincarnation is not in play, uh, it has a little bit more work to do now players like more to Kaiser, like Debbie has minimums. So I’ve done a lot of work proving that even despite, despite that, despite only having access to four copies of any medical incarnation in an 80 card, your eye on deck, that’s still a good enough to five-oh leagues does throwing Grove power up that deck.

I mean, we’re going to have to see you like, this is an interesting tool to have and while slow on his face, it’s a pretty unique effect for a, uh, archetype that hasn’t seen a lot of play.

Damon Alexander: [01:01:09] Yeah.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:01:11] If we dip over to green again, this is a card. Oh my gosh. Tireless. Provisioner let’s talk about that one for a minute.

Damon Alexander: [01:01:21] Yes, this is two and a green for a literally a tireless tracker, but first off, properly typed with landfall. And secondly, inside getting a clue token, you get a food or a treasure magic seems to have now viewed food, treasure and clues as these permanent common token types that aren’t creatures. Uh, we see these cards, food, treasures, and clues being keyworded across a number of cards.

We even have a card. What is it? Uh, academy manufacturer. If you create a clue food or treasure token, and say, create one of each kind of tying the three together. So Tyler’s provisioner is the food and treasure counterpart to tireless, trackers, um, clues. There is another difference, I guess it doesn’t get the plus one plus one counters.

When you sack a treasure or a food that will be actually kind of busted with the treasures being free to sack. So what do you think, Dan,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:02:21] if you were assembling at adventuring party, would you prefer to bring a tireless tracker or a tireless? Provisioner?

Damon Alexander: [01:02:29] Uh,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:02:32] the provisional air brings snacks, I assume, and money.

And the tracker just brings clues.

Damon Alexander: [01:02:37] I think the word party in particular is got me confused because Scouts aren’t part of the party mechanic, right?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:02:43] No, I guess they’re not,

Damon Alexander: [01:02:43] it’s just like, wait, if I missed this remembering party, it’s been, it’s been a few months since we were in San car, I think. Oh no.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:02:50] I just meant like a literal party, like trip or something.

Damon Alexander: [01:02:54] Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely the provision. Are you kidding? Like the title is trackers. Like the asshole who’s like, oh yes. This kayaking trick reminds me of a Zen koan. And as a paddle off you’re like, wait, what was this? There’s Tyler’s provision was like, Hey man, I got some extra beer.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:03:10] Yeah, whenever you make landfall Scouts out, the seven 11 brings back the six back.

So we used to do a lot of tickets on tireless tracker. It’s a car that I continue to believe in. Am I do mitts to waste tickets on tireless? Provisioner I do think that they compete head to head is a treasurer better than a Cleveland. Um, I’m actually not sure. Like it’s a lot easier to get clear as than it is to get treasures, because I think the designers understand how dangerous fast manner is.

Uh, food is not worth a ton, but a treasure is worth quite a lot.

Damon Alexander: [01:03:47] Yeah. One way to interpret time’s provision or is that it is a slightly more expensive Lotus Cobra, uh, with a little bit of upside, you’d rather have generally a treasurer than a man in your pool. Of course, cards like Caren did turn off your treasures changes that math a little bit, but is it worth paying one more minute to get a slowly, slowly different, maybe better load Cobra?

Probably not, but perhaps

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:04:11] going back to our discussion of Yaba Maya, the, the new cradle, I mean, that’s a, that’s a card that could really help a landfall deck out a lot because you can leave your fetches on cracked and still use them to curve out with whatever it is. Low-dose cobras tireless. Provisioner obviously board already did that, but it was never worth going out of your way to play herb Borg for something so marginal, but maybe it’s good enough if it’s on a native Greenland.

Damon Alexander: [01:04:36] Yeah, this card actually does something weird. If you play this on turn four and then play a fetch land.

No, nevermind. I was thinking of that. This kind of does like the casserole or whatever thing where you can immediately have Silam guard scoring up. And I guess the answer is no, unless you have a lot more men up. No, you can. Well, they can respond to the trigger and they can, they respond to the trigger for where you getting your first treasure and then you sack your land.

You get one treasure. So I guess you can hold up, dive down, but you already kind of could by just playing Atlanta begin with, and the dive down tells us provisional deck is surely not much caliber.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:05:19] Yeah. I think we’ll be seeing more of this card than you might expect. Um, I’m working on underworld cookbook decks, as I mentioned for, uh, as Maura know, Martika diced in a cold car episode.

And one of the things that that deck does is. When you find underworld cookbook, you’re able to generate a lot of food, a lot of tokens. And that raises questions like, do you want to play the witch’s oven culture and familiar combo? Do you want to play mayhem devil with fetch lands? These are all cars that have anchored strategies that just run clean through standard historic all the way into pioneer.

Maybe it’s time for them to bust into modern. Um, if I’m building that deck with collect a company and maybe I want to F to find tireless provisioners as well.

Damon Alexander: [01:06:04] Yeah. This card is also exciting for canned Lander. Uh, the a hundred card format with Singleton can really use either. This card is a slightly worse load as Cobra.

If you’re in the market for a Lotus Cobra and you want to have them, this may be the best, uh, the best next Cobra. And it’s a good platform to actually try it out. And maybe you play it. And you’re like, oh, my this card is so much better than Lotus Cobra. Having treasures to sack in a later Turner in my opponent’s turn, you look at all your Lotus Cobra triggers that go wasted.

Um, Or you, you died a burn with a load of Cobra out. And man, I wish I had Capoeira few more food.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:06:39] So we are potentially generating a lot of artifacts, tokens. What should we do with those artifacts? Well, one of the themes of the set is affinity affinity for artifacts. Now there’s also affinity for tokens on this weird junk winder card, but let’s, let’s focus on affinity for artifacts first.

Damon Alexander: [01:06:57] Yes, the splashiest one we’ve seen, I think is the cart thought monitor six and a blue for a two to artifact, creature construct with affinity, for artifacts flying and on ETB draw two cards. So it’s kind of like the card thought cast, which always felt extremely oppressive to me, like becoming a single blue to draw two cards.

Now you get a single blue perhaps for a two, two flyer that draws two cards, which. Yeah, I love casting. Glasspool mimic with heartless summiting out, copying Mulldrifter believe me, this card seems like it’s doing that effect, but a lot more, a lot less generally, perhaps,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:07:35] you know, like the artifacts that you would need to enable this have gotten jankier over time.

Like, do you, if you see a deck shaping up in your mind where you have a plausible early curve, get six artifacts on play and then start spanning thought monitors.

Damon Alexander: [01:07:50] Yeah. Every time a car like this comes out, people are like, oh my gosh, I wish we had mocks, Opal. Ugh, I hate modern or whatever, or whoever you want to blame for Maxwell pool, getting banned.

On the other hand, I feel like if max Oprah was around, they couldn’t print cars like this into modern, um, they would just be too high of a density of cards that make thought monitor, just kind of go, go off. And so it’s only because of the band that we’re allowed to have a card like this. One new thing that we have that we haven’t touched on yet is there is a new set of artifact lands that are all indestructable the downside is they come into play tapped. The upside is they tapped for two calls

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:08:27] and that’s a common cycle, I guess, primarily for limited purposes.

Damon Alexander: [01:08:32] Well, ancient denim was a common cycle. You know, it was that for limited purposes. I don’t know, but I want to being way too strong.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:08:40] Well, I guess they don’t have land types, so you can’t fetch them.

And I know I’m going to sound like a very entitled player complaining about how I can attach on my artifact lands to fix, but because they don’t have land types, if you actually want that effects, you have to put a lot of them in your deck. Like if you’re looking to build around those new artifact to do a lens, you’re going to be drawing these tap plans.

A good chunk of the time and tap lands is a big cost.

Damon Alexander: [01:09:09] These cars are definitely not as good as C to the Sonata agent den at all. There’s no doubt. On the other hand, affinity means that the lands like ancient dent have for two manner effectively, and these tap plants have for one man of attorney, you play them.

But two men at the next turn, which might be the right point to make them fair, but not too good. Hmm.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:09:29] So amulet a vigor affinity with taps, common artifact to a Lance, the power out, your thought monitoring.

Damon Alexander: [01:09:37] I mean the play you’re drawing two cards. Every time you cast a thumb on, or you can afford to have a ton of dead cards in your deck, right?

Hmm. Well, that might not be true.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:09:47] Yeah. It’s an exciting tool. I mean, it feels like a throwback card, just like throwing a Bowens to players who love affinity. It doesn’t seem especially powerful to me, but maybe, maybe I’m not understanding like just how good it will be to cast this for one or two minutes and then somehow do it again, whether that’s with FMRI or whether that’s with Emory or something else.

Damon Alexander: [01:10:09] Yeah, we, we need a meme where the two class pans or whatever, where it’s like affinity players. Mulldrifter players love for thought monitor, but I guess you have to love affinity more than Mulldrifter to play this card in your deck.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:10:24] All right. So we have moved down through the single colored cards. There are a couple of gold cards that I think might be worth touching on.

Can we talk about general Ferris? 

Damon Alexander: [01:10:36] yeah. So general Ferris Roku lyric is one red white for a three, one legendary human soldier with hex proof from mano colored. And whenever you cast a multi-colored spell, create a four, four red and white Gollum artifact creature token. So it’s kind of like a hero of precinct one, but just buffed up in a number of ways where you get much larger tokens.

And it has protection from a lot of whole lot of cards in modern. Uh, but as a little bit slower

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:11:10] hero of precinct one. Oh, because of the multicolor thing, I was like, thanks for four is there’s no similarity at all. Like, yeah. I guess I think that makes for fours as kind of like a thing that makes one ones,

Damon Alexander: [01:11:24] well, you want to cast a lot of multi-colored spells after playing this, I guess.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:11:29] Gotcha. So it’s a three drop that pays you off for doing something else. And that’s something else involves spending man on. So on the one hand cars like this tends to flop, I mean, we’ve seen Sizemore, which not be super impressive. You play this as more, which that’s usually your entire return and then maybe you follow it up next to her and then make some one, one tokens, general Ferris, slightly different, right?

It’s. Hex proof for mono color. So I think it has a greater chance of surviving until the next turn. If you do survive to the next turn, uh, your opponent is potentially in a huge amount of trouble. Why is that? Well, it turns out that a lot of the good cascades spills are multicolor Charlotte agents, blood rate elf, uh, you cascade with one of those, you hit a metamorphose, you’ve got two, four, four gold on this right there.

Now what, what do you do with the two men off metamorphoses? You play another gold card, blatant helix or whatever you want. Um, I wasn’t sure like how powerful this would be, but just seeing the deck list that people are proposing on the first couple days of previews. I think this is a card that we’ll be seeing a lot of, at least in the first week as people try to figure out just how game winning general Ferris is.

Damon Alexander: [01:12:46] Yeah. And the thing is that there are definitely holes in that strategy, but general Ferris himself doesn’t seem to have too many easy counters. The card Wrenn and Six comes to mind. Uh, so the opponent plays general Ferris or Kira, and then you on tap and play Wrenn and Six down tick. It is a multi-colored card.

You can do that, but there aren’t that many multi-colored removal spells to see a ton of play. I mean, Prismari command is seeing play now Witherbloom command is not seeing play, but maybe needs to.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:13:12] Hmm. Do you think the general Ferris could make it in humans? Does that play enough? Multicolor effects?

Damon Alexander: [01:13:21] It doesn’t really right now.

I mean, they have mantis writer meddling MEJ they don’t really want to play metamorphose with a Thelia. I think that this card is sort of not what humans is looking to do, where they already create a big wide board. And that’s what this card can do with the right enablers. But I think that humans is not the home for those enablers.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:13:42] Yeah. That’s a fair point. All right. I’ve mentioned Charlotte’s agent a few times. Uh, maybe we should just deal with this card head on. So this is originally printed in. Plain cheese, 2012. Um, it has been a legacy staple at various times in and out of tier one and legacy. Pretty much since the beginning.

Now it’s finally into modern. What does this do for the format?

Damon Alexander: [01:14:10] Yeah, so it’s just as a quick refresher, one green blue fray, Tutu artifact, human rogue with cascade in legacy. There’s a card called or a deck called chartless bug. Typically. And so when legacy, the way that deck works is it’s not like some crazy all in combo deck.

It’s a deck that plays Charlotte’s agent along with ancestral visions and brainstorm. And so some percent of the time you set up a brainstorm into Charlotte’s agent cast, ancestral vision off the cascade, which is ancestral recall at that point. And then a game of legacy that is typically one on small margins that will let you in by a large margin, but the deck was designed so that sometimes you just don’t resolve that brainstorm and you cascade into a tomboy and you’re not too unhappy with it.

So in modern, will we work with his card in, in that way? Kind of in a fair. Green blue deck that happens to play in central vision without access to brainstorm, but with access to the brain stone. Uh, I’m not sure I should play brainstorm. I don’t want to link these two cards too closely. Uh, or is this a card that helps you cast either crashing footfalls as social vision, uh, restore balance, perhaps in one of these, the, the all-in, as for told archetypes,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:15:27] it seems like it’s going to be the latter, at least for the first week or two, this card must have been put into the set file a year ago or more.

They tested it, given the tools available. Then in the interim time, we’ve had call time. We’ve seen Tybalt cascade where I think one of the lessons from that brief two week period when Tybalt was completely broken, was that if you want to build a deck that starts playing on three CMC, because you’re looking to play violent outbursts as your first actual spell that you cast.

And you can do it. There’s plenty of tools. Um, there’s adventure creatures are a perfect thing to do on turn to there’s dismember. If you want that there’s mystical disputes, gemstone caverns can accelerate you if necessary. There’s plenty of free spells there’s force of negation. Now there’s an entire cycle of evoke Mythics Charlotte’s agent pitches.

The two of those Mythics pitches, super with subtlety and endurance the green one. So it’s totally plausible, perhaps even good, just to just construct a deck where your first actual cast is going to be a heartless agent, probably fetching a crashing footfalls. If I had to just rank all the different free spells together, I think the guarantee of two rhinos is probably better than any of the other free effects.

Damon Alexander: [01:16:51] Yeah. I mean, living end is the most powerful upside. I think of all those effects or just some sort of restore balance, uh, Gargan on combo to falls is certainly good. Um, and it’s probably the easiest sort of single card package you don’t have to build around, you know, living in requires playing a bunch of cycling creatures.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:17:11] Yeah, no, that’s a good point though. I mean, as for toll living end, um, blue based living index are actually very good, but they’re hovering around tier two and they’ve pushed out the junk cascade versions. So yeah, I do. I do think Charlotte station will also go into that archetype that trumps the other crashing footfalls version of cascade and you can cite into crashing footfalls if you expect graveyard hate.

So now you’ll have a bunch of different angles.

Damon Alexander: [01:17:41] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Asper told. Crushing footfalls deck. Typically isn’t built around the cascade angle. It’s built around casting them from hand off of Asper told in electro dominance. And so it’s not clear to me that tech wants to actually play Charlotte’s agent.

Cause for example, Charlotte’s agent into, they play like to play cards like Serum Visions. A lot of the time to help us smooth their draws, a SROs agent into electro dominance for zero is actually not that bad. It still does the job. Um, but it’s not clear that deck is ready to cut it’s cheap cards.

Although maybe I needed to just pull up a deck list from the last month or so

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:18:21] I think we’ll see a rebuild of the archetype, maybe a merging of the blue as for 12 versions and the adjunct cascade versions.

Damon Alexander: [01:18:28] Yeah. I mean, the sets normally gives it a ton of, uh, new cards to try out. So we’ll have to just try a ton of different versions of it.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:18:36] Yeah. And the evoke stuff all plays beautifully without, you know, the evil elemental ends up in the graveyard. It doesn’t interrupt your cascade. So a little bit upsetting that they are pushing start lists and the evoke Mythics at the same time. Like they just pair so well together. That’s it seems like we’ll be seeing a lot of that maybe too much in, in the first couple of weeks, but we’ll see, hopefully, you know, maybe it’s a very time reveler and void Mujer can hold these free effects at bay.

Damon Alexander: [01:19:05] Yeah. So Casper chaos got 15 place in a recent modern challenge. Um, and they’re running four bolt, three op four Serum Visions, one spell piers to remand as poor hits to Charlotte’s agent. Uh, I’m going to hand they have 12 good hits and obviously, yeah, you, you could certainly, you don’t need lightning bolt.

If you have a fury

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:19:32] two last cards we’ll touch on here. The first one is cyan of Draco.

Damon Alexander: [01:19:39] Yeah. So this one is 12 Manoj for a four for artifact, creature, dragon, but in true Drake on sense Draco sense, it has domain, the spell costs two less to cast for each basic land type among lands you control. So getting as low as two Manoj, if you have the full domain as flying and then each pitcher you control has vigilance.

If it’s white hex proof, if it’s blue, Lifelink LinkedIn is black first rank of his red and trample. If it’s green as usual white as the worst of the cycle. Uh, but yeah, it bumps your team. So is this card, are you trying to just get a two man or four, four flyer out of this or they can’t be pushed or bolted or are you trying to actually like, you know, make your while and the cattle have trample, uh, in some sort of like domain zoo deck, where does this take you Dan,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:20:31] either both of those places.

I think this is a super cool card. Mostly just for the number in its upper right-hand corner, being a 12 drop that you can cast for two men, uh, opens up a lot of cool stuff. How are you going to get signage? I go into play most likely, you know, you’re fetching it trial and on term one and then, uh, uh, shock land on turn two.

So it’s not necessarily going to be term one, the cattle term, you know, whatever, or maybe you are trying to just do wild in the kettle, something else on turn. See where there’s a, there’s a, cavedan called territorial. Cavedan that gets buffed for each land type you have in play. That’s a new one from Modern Horizons too.

And then maybe on your third term, you’re playing the sign of Draco. The zoo is definitely a place you could put that the other home that I think people are exploring would be the general Ferris cascade shell. Uh, where again, you’re going to be in multiple colors, a lot of gold cards. Maybe you’re just looking for two drops.

Um, because you know, if you’re playing Charlotte’s agent blood rate elf. You’re going to want something to do on turn two and sign out Draco could be that thing.

Damon Alexander: [01:21:38] Yeah. I mean, traumas that you get domain faster than we’ve ever seen.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:21:42] Yeah. Then of course that’s a gold deck. So your creatures will be randomly receiving these bonuses.

They might give it. Maybe they’ll get lively. I mean, some of these are good. Some are not. I think most of these abilities don’t move the needle too much on your creatures. Uh, notably none of them are grant evasion.

Damon Alexander: [01:22:01] Well, tramples, evasion.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:22:04] Yeah. That’s true. Trampolines division. The other home that I’m going to try is something where you get paid off for the 12 CMC on Sino Draco.

We’ve talked previously on the podcast about erratic explosion and, and my love for just stacking the top of your deck and revealing something with, uh, With a high CMC, they gave us a little bit of love for that archetype in the form of calibrated blasts. It’s basically a Radic explosion, but as an instant, and it has flashback.

So to integrate for an instance, you reveal the cars from the top of your library until you reveal the non land card. And then the calibrated blast deals that much damage to the target. You choose the target you chose before you started reviewing. So it is a little bit random, but maybe you’re trying to just reveal signup Draco with that and not one shot your opponents, but just the most of them is you need to, maybe you’re setting that up with a Dragon’s rage Chandler that has surveil ones.

So you’ll know when, when the time is rights to fire off your calibrator blast because surreal triggers let you see the top card of your library and then between sign of Draco and dragons, race channeler, uh, you’ve got two sort of cheap delver style evasive threats.

Damon Alexander: [01:23:17] So you think that enough of the time you’ll be able to cast. Uh, actually calibrated, calibrated Blass.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:23:25] Oh gosh, little correction here. Uh, see judge Robin, the chat here, calibrator blasts, lets you choose the target after you reveal a card. That’s shocking. Okay. So this is used as the new new templates. When you reveal an online card this way, then you choose the target.

So the opposite order of erotic explosion, this is so much better than erotic explosion. I can’t believe it. And if you recall in our Modern Horizons wishlist episode, I was going to get to be content with erratic exposure, which is a sorcery calibrate. A blast is way, way better.

Damon Alexander: [01:23:59] This new reflexive trigger just wasn’t around 10 years ago.

Uh, and honestly, I don’t think I have a full grasp over what reflects it figures exactly how they work. I’ll just say that much.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:24:12] All right. Well, I, wasn’t going to talk about calibrated blast. In this episode, I was going to save that for the next show, because I know David was not high on it, but I think maybe he might’ve misread it as well, given that it actually lets you see what car do you reveal before you choose the target?

I think that just dramatically changes the card. It goes from being a brew around. Cool. Is it through the breech Emrakul style alternative combo. That’s one future for it. It could just be like a fantastic tier one counter Bern style card. I mean that’s, that’s so powerful. You fire it off. Wait and see.

Maybe you just hit a Sino Draco or maybe you hit a split card and maybe you hit a secret restoration and suddenly you’re, you’re dealing seven, eight damage at instant speed on their end step. And then when you get a five and you can flash it back and do it again to finish the job.

Damon Alexander: [01:25:01] Well, I liked that. For like a counter burn style, it has flashbacks. So it’s kind of like a two for one, even if it’s slow. On the other hand, if you’re playing counter burn, you typically are really scrambling to survive. And if you ever hit like an opt off this or a lightning bolt deal one, yeah. You can change your target or choose your target then and figure out what’s the best one, you know, target to hit with one damage, but frequently the best target hit for one damage is the concede button. Uh, if this card is a critical part of your game plan.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:25:35] Yeah, I really don’t want to just put it in a deck. We’re always going to fire it off blind, but I think it’s worth working for dragons. Res Chandler is one way to do it. Brain stone, I think is actually a perfectly reasonable card for a slower control deck.

Any turn where you can just spend one to get the brilliance, the one in play and you just sit on it until you’re ready to set up the top of your library for a calibrated blessed.

Damon Alexander: [01:26:00] Yeah. Yeah, that’s correct. I mean, I agree that this is an intriguing card. Um, another car that is likely to break Dan’s brain, most of us can survive cars like this, but not Dan.

Usually this card is moderation, one white blueprint and chairman, you can’t cast more than once each turn. And then whenever you cast a spell draw card for me and, and it just, it just seems like, well, the best way to abuse it as if you’re casting spells on your torn and their turn, you continually have gas because you’re drawing two, three cards, a turn cycle then.

So you want to play this in some sort of a flash style deck, but that’s just a big hoop to jump through. And my brain probably just shuts down before I ever started brewing around this card. That’s why we have Dan and David on this cast. Dan, where does this card take? You?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:26:53] Sam black was brought in as a consultant on Modern Horizons too, in the later stages of the set.

So I think it was him, Brad Nelson and Brian Brown doin, and Zach Elsik were kind of the, uh, the pro stress testers. And they also designed a few cards to fill holes. So Sam black had a very interesting thread about this. This is a card that he designed and he talks about in the thread that’s symmetrical affects that changed the rules of the game.

Like how will the mine or whatever have been mostly pushed out of one-on-one play because they’re considered unfun. They, even though they’re fun for the player who put it in their deck and wanted to play the style of game, they’re not fun for the other player. And as a result, we just haven’t seen many cars like that. That just fundamentally changed the rules of magic.

Damon Alexander: [01:27:38] Yes. Now we have cards like to ferry time reveler who do not symmetrically change the rules of magic and as a result are extremely fun. Right?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:27:46] Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So he talked about in the thread, how they initially started this off at two CMC, and it was like a little bit too scary.

You do need to find a way around the drawback. Kathleen, only one speller turn is exploitable for the opponents. If the opponents, if your line of defense was going to be double spelling on your turn counter, this remove that, but that’s just a new rule. You have to work with change it so that your plan is not to double spell on their term, I think is actually a really interesting deck building challenge.

And I’m just excited to see this card in the mix. How will you get around the drawback? Well, the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure you’re triggering this as often as possible free spells. Again, going back to that evoke mythic cycle or a perfect way to do this. It means that even though you’re only allowed to cast one spell per turn, you’re not going to be choked on manna rate.

You can tap out on your term for something impressive and then still have solitude or subtlety on the opponent’s turn. And every time you’re doing this, you’re drawing cards. If you want to get really crazy, you can look for effects that do something without technically casting a spell shark typhoon would be an example of this, although that eats up a lot of your men.

So I’m not super excited about shark typhoon, but maybe somebody eternalize cards, um, those get around it. I think timeless dragon is a new one from this set that that might work, uh, any effect that triggers when you cycle, it’s going to take a little bit of thought, but all you need is a couple of Thrones with this, for the opponent to realize that they just can’t beat this permanent recycle effect, play a card, draw card, play a card draw card.

Damon Alexander: [01:29:33] Yeah. And like a straight Playboy control deck. This card, arguably can almost replace Jason, mind sculpture, a car that you play when you’re ahead to keep you ahead by making sure you never run out of gas. This card might be good enough that you never run. Yes. On the other hand, plaintiff on curve on turn three, I really struggled to find a time I would ever look at this card and to very time reveler my hand and want to play.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:29:58] So you’re thinking it’s just not as good as the other options.

Damon Alexander: [01:30:02] It’s weird. It’s like, again on turn three, I almost always would prefer to play to very time reveler and, and that’s, that’s fine. It’s okay to be a strictly worse on curve play than to very time rival. It’s very, it’s just such a good card.

It’s going to only be better now with all these, uh, suspend, uh, cards coming around and cascade cards coming around. Um, but what seems interesting to me about moderation is you don’t have to play down curve. In fact, it might be kind of poor to play on curve because it doesn’t affect the battlefield that turn.

And so if you’re playing this on turn five, turns six, it feels like it’s providing the same card advantage as to ferry here of domino area. With the same effectively being three men have versus like a five drop effect. And so you play this on turn five, turns six, whatever. Then you play like a Serum Visions on your turn, draw two cards, go to your opponents, turn flash in like a solitude or something, or just Packard creature draw card.

And then from there, if you have the right density of instance, and maybe yeah, you maybe have a shark typhoon or two in your deck, uh, you should be able to, I think steadily pull ahead. You have enough sweepers that if they try to go wide, uh, you can fight back that way.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:31:12] Well, in the example, you’re giving here, that’s drawing twice as many cards as to ferry here, abdominal area to ferry only draws one extra quarter, turn moderation draws too.

And that’s huge.

Damon Alexander: [01:31:22] Yeah. Yeah. To ferry and Jace, I have two minor upsides in the sense that they can both win the game on their own against like an infinite life combo or just a opponent who doesn’t like conceding, moderation alone will actually lose you the game. Cause eventually you’ll just deck out. And so you still need to find a way to actually close the game out.

Maybe that’s a social Colonnade.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:31:44] I mean, I assume we’ll be playing the evoke Mythics because that seems to be the direction things are headed. So I’ll finish the game off with subtleties and solitudes.

Damon Alexander: [01:31:53] Yeah. That is the argument for playing moderation on curve. Uh, it didn’t used to be so good to just tap out and turn three without, um, you know, a car that affects the board immediately.

But if you play this in immediately can start evoking your spells. Uh, you make up with the car disadvantage pretty easily.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:32:12] You can’t cast more than one spell at CERN. I mean, that’s a scary line of texts, but for me, I’m here for this. I’m expecting to see this card. Over-performed expectations, not by a ton, but I think it will be a, a way to approach control.

That is actually quite hard to keep up with once it’s up and running.

Damon Alexander: [01:32:29] I think it’ll underperform, to be honest, the Carter whirlwind of thought has been available in Jeskai colors. Uh, it’s one more manna. Uh, one more Redman in particularly have to play, uh, another color and it only triggers on non creature spells, but it doesn’t have the drawback.

And that card has seen, I don’t think anybody’s ever, literally ever cast that in a game of modern in all of time,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:32:52] four versus three extra color, and those pit spells didn’t exist. So, yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see. Yeah. All right. Well, the lesson from this card is that we should do everything in moderation. And in that spirit, I think this is a good time to call it here for this special bonus episode.

Obviously we haven’t even scratched the surface of the sets as many cars as we talked about. Now, there’s like a whole other pile, exciting cars that brew around cars that I’m sure we’re going to be seeing a lot of at the top table. Soon.

Damon Alexander: [01:33:28] I will say we have in fact scratched the surface. Um, we haven’t cut all the way through the cake, but we at least have gone through the frosting.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:33:36] Fair enough. So David Robertson and we’ll be back. We will be, uh, talking through some more of the previews in our Friday episode. And then on Sunday we will be brewing around as more on the Martika Dyson or colder car and the madness package. So you’ll be getting an extra doses of Faithless Brewing later this week.

But until then we will bid you adieu.

Damon Alexander: [01:33:58] Yeah, crazy time for us modern players, hopefully, uh, we are helping you through this tumultuous, exciting time.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:34:07] Take care. This concludes part three of our brewers guide to Modern Horizons to check back on Friday for part four and download the latest deck at Faithless Brewing dot com.

Support for this podcast is provided by brewers lake you. If you’d like what we do, you can join our community at patrion.com/fake this period for discord access bonus content and more that’s all for today. Stay safe and we’ll see you next time.