#mtgpio

Anax and Cymede: I’m pretty confident that the RW blitz deck is going to be real, and this couple is both a decent body on their own, but also has the benefit of making pumps on them give power and trample to your whole team, which makes this have significant reason to be slotted in and played. If the RW blitz deck is played in the next year, this card should be in it.

Ashen Rider: Say hello to one of your best persist targets, that gets you significant value even when killed, and is good on a regular board and scary when you’re already ahead and can afford to hit a land.

Assemble the Legion: I think this card just takes a bit too long to really get going, even if, once it does, it just takes over the game. You need your cards to have some decent amount of immediate impact, and that’s the primary and singular true flaw of this card. If it triggered on entry and upkeep, I think it’d stand a chance in today’s economy, but that’s a different card, and this card is almost certainly not playable.

Azorius Charm: This card is one of the best charms we have, because it does 2 modes at a decent rate and it has 2 modes that you’d actually like to cast. Those modes don’t fully overlap, but the removal mode hits a sweet spot of being good and cheap, and the other two are legitimately good fallbacks for if you either need to gain more life than removing an attacker does or if you don’t have pressure on you and just want to cycle it.

Blood Baron of Vizkopa: Protection from white and from black with 4 toughness is largely hexproof against all but a small collection of removal spells, but being a 5 mana 4/4 is a bit awkward while it doesn’t have any other evasion. Against Jeskai decks where it’s going to be hard to muster 4 power of nonwhite creatures against it, it could be decent, but it’s hard to justify if decks are going deeper into red than just bonecrusher, a few great removal spells, and fury.

Boros Reckoner: For the holidays this year, we get another stuffy doll, and one that’s not embarrassing otherwise! I think it’s still not enough to find a home outside of the stuffy doll deck, but it’s totally defensible in a few decks and obviously great in a niche meme deck.

Bring to Light: I don’t think the 5color pile is going to be that great, but I do think it will be able to often hold its own, especially now that Bring to Light can act as a lot of a silver bullet, able to easily be a second copy of your wraths, single-target removal, and haymakers at the same time. Plus, it works scarily well with cards like snapcaster mage, so a deck not too dissimilar from Pioneer’s Niv to Light deck seems definitely doable for us, especially with really good 2c haymakers and enablers.

Cartel Aristocrat: This card’s very good for the crats deck, though its one weakness is sweepers as opposed to yahenni’s vulnerability to a lot more Single Target Removal. It’s just a really good card to consistently get in, block about as perfectly as you want, or just be a sac outlet that is very hard to kill.

Catacomb Sifter: This card is scarily good at smoothing out your draws as the entire purpose of its being–it generates a mana to ensure you get to 4 mana or above 4 and that also triggers itself, but it also just causes jund or abzan crats decks to keep checking what they’ll draw until they find something good enough, which can be an achilles’ heel of the deck occasionally.

Chromanticore: I was feeling pretty good about this card, but the more I think about it the worse it looks, getting to the point where it kind of just looks like a harder to cast Lyra, and I’m just not excited about that anymore in the current or next year.

Counterflux: Wowie Invert Polarity did a goddamn NUMBER on this card oofa doofa

Destructive Revelry: I think naturalizes have a pretty high bar at this point, and Revelry does a lot to help clear that bar, but I think I’d still rather have broader removal or removal that does more in its slot, like Cindervines or First Pig 

Dragonlord Atarka: I can see this as a good sneak target or one of your highest end in a Big Gruul deck, where it acts as a second copy of fury that deals a bit more damage in both respects, which, for a sneak attack deck, gets a lot of mileage.

Dragonlord Dromoka: I was pretty decently high on this card, but now I’m coming to terms with the fact that it just is an idiot without a real way to protect itself until it becomes relevant.

Dragonlord Kolaghan: This dragon just being a big hasty idiot that gives haste to your other idiots is largely enough to get some people on board, but for Ellesandra specifically it’s a way to make a spell and dragonstorm into a win without more mana or board presence, and that might be enough for me to get excited for the deck.

Dragonlord Ojutai: I think Ojutai has ultimately become outclassed by Dream Trawler, but it’s still not a laughable card, especially because you get to go a turn before it can be targeted, at which point you can be holding up your mana drain or the like again.

Dragonlord Silumgar: Silumgar’s steal being contingent on him sticking around just makes him all around awkward, and it means you have to put a lot of work into keeping him around just in order to have a steal effect.

Dreadbore: You’re totally at liberty to play this, and it’s fine, but we have so many options for removal these days that dreadbore just gets a little less interesting and appealing each time.

Dreg Mangler: YOOOOO IT’S THE JUICE BAYBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE yeah, hell yeah, fuck yeah play this card, it’s the fucking juice, baybee, play this card, hell yeah

Epic Experiment: I’m gonna be real I stopped reading this card halfway through back in 2014 I’m sure as hell not reading it now.

Fleecemane Lion: This is, in fact, a watchwolf with upside, but that upside is pretty meek these days. That said, if you can make it work, it goes hard, and an unkillable threat is a pretty neat thing.

Garruk, Apex Predator: I love Garruk so much, and this is one of my favorite planeswalkers around, but it is definitely 7 mana and doesn’t put in a ton of effort to live up to that mana cost. Making deathtouch creatures on a plus is nice, outright destroying Teferis and Vronos is cute and all, but it’s just so much mana in a format where 7 mana can say “singlehandedly turn the game around” and it’s still dubious if we’ll play it.

Ghor-Clan Rampager: This card’s awfully close to playable, but really only if you consider it to be a pump spell and not a 4/4 trampler for 4. However, our room for pump spells is super low, so you have to be getting your mileage out of both sides, and more than another pump spell or protection spell would give you.

Kiora’s Follower: This is a super versatile mana dork, and I could see it popping up in UG ramp shells as a mana dork that has added utility as a way to muck Wandering Emperors (and, in some part, Wandering Rescuers) without significantly sacrificing on its ramp potential, and it works really well with the myriad ways we have to get more mana from our lands. Oh yeah, and this singlehandedly gives me the joy needed to maybe try building paradorks again now that we have a small pile of new ways to combo off or increase our reach.

Lotleth Troll: This guy’s kind of like psychic frog, except much, much worse. Psychic Frog is one of the strongest creatures in our format, so much, much worse than that is probably still playable or at least close to it.

Loxodon Smiter: I’m dubious of how good this card is, but if BR midrange ever gets to the dominance that jeskai is enjoying right now, it’s pretty safe for a GW deck to sleeve up the now 3 ways to cheat out big idiots by opponents playing kroxa and Lili’s

Lyev Skynight: I might play this card in skies, but it’s a 3 drop that is only pretty good in a format where the bar is often higher than that.

Martial Glory: I like this card; I even think that it is playable in a RW blitz deck, but I can’t bring myself to believe that a 2 mana giant growth has the juice to make it in this format, so even if I try out RW blitz, I doubt I’ll be sleeving up this card in it until convinced otherwise.

Medomai the Ageless: This card’s goofy as hell, and there’s a few ways we have of turning him into infinite turns, but also. This card SUCKS.

Nivix Cyclops: Yeah someone is going to kill me with this card in an izzet blitz deck and I’m going to say “yeah, someone was going to kill me with this card in an izzet blitz list eventually.”

Possessed Skaab: Card’s cool and all, but it is the combination of the worst gravediggers we’ve ever seen and the worst archeomancers we’ve seen, and that’s not a combination that turns into a playable card.

Progenitor Mimic: This card is very sweet, and has a lot of goofy applications, but it also is a 6 mana clone, so it really can only be awful in our format, and that’s coming from someone who tried to make Canlander clones into a deck that won a match and failed.

Ruric Thar, the Unbowed: The good news is that I do consider Ruric Thar to, by and large, have Ward - Pay 6 life, and he is a funny card to have that text. The bad news is that I also think he’s still not worthwhile, even in a ramp shell that can get him out on turn 4ish. 

Selesnya Charm: Unlike Azorius Charm, this charm suffers from “no on-rate mode syndrome,” a condition where the card is too hard to cast to be a worthwhile 2/2 for 2 with flash (compared to Virtue of Loyalty), super restrictive for removal, and quite inefficient for a pump spell. That said, I could still see it being played, I just think it needs to be for the versatility in specific, and if your deck too often picks the same mode, it might be an option to switch to a better card for that mode.

Sin Collector: The fact that this doesn’t temporarily exile the card is quite nice, and essentially the only fact keeping it off an easy dismissal. That said, it’s still not that good, just not an inherently bad choice.

Sire of Insanity: This card is actually a pretty good litmus card, which is to say, a card that tells you if you’re winning or not. If your opponent doesn’t answer the card before it triggers, you’re winning, and if they answer it, you’re losing, probably because they removed your 6 drop for either 1 or 2 mana. A mark of a good magic player is being able to tell that they’re losing or winning without playing a really bad 6 drop.

Skyrider Elf: This is, ironically, a creature that gets worse the more mana you put into it on a per mana basis. For example, a 2 mana 2/2 flier is pretty good, and the stats are reasonable. A 3 mana 3/3 flier is also pretty good, but, with no text, it’s a bit less exciting. At 4 mana, a 4/4 flier needs some pretty decent text to become worthwhile, and at 5 mana, a 5/5 flier is actually quite a mediocre to even bad statline, especially when you consider that its real casting cost at that point is WUBRG.

Steam Augury: There is, in fact, a reason that the phrase is EoTFoFYL and not EoTSAYL, and it’s further than just FoF getting printed first. Giving your opponent agency over which exact card you get is pretty awkward, and for steam augury’s particular case, it makes the prospect of this 4 mana probably-draw-two-or-draw-a-less-powerful-three a bit unexciting.

Stormchaser Mage: I mean, you’ll play this card in Izzet Blitz, but I’m doubtful it’ll make the grade elsewhere, and even in blitz it’s really just a swiftspear sidegrade at best.

Swift Warkite: This card is bad but it looks interesting sometimes. If we get a legitimate archaeomancer at 3, this card becomes a lot more interesting, but as is, getting a couple etbs off a 3 drop isn’t quite enough for me to be on board.

Thunderclap Wyvern: This whole set has been pinging my 2014-2017 nostalgia alarms, but this one hits especially hard. It’s also not good, arguably even in skies.

Urban Evolution: This card is just deeply unexciting for our format imo. It sorta gets the job done in the right deck, but even then, we just have treasure cruise and dig for the time being, y’know?

Zendikar Incarnate: Wow, this card’s bad. 4 toughness on a 4 drop who’s only saving grace is that it can have a huge front end is really awkward, especially when like… they totally could’ve just made this an X/X and not an X/4.

Athreos, God of Passage: Athreos might be the best of the Theros 15 (I actually think they’re third, but go off king) sheerly due to their ability to strongarm the opponent so easily. With a sac outlet, all removal on your creatures become either bounce effects or are lava spikes while they’re at it, and either way, you’re feeling happy. 3 mana for 3 blood artists is a great rate, and that’s the baseline for Athreos, because the alternative is just that you get an immense lever of control to get back your doomed travelers, sac outlets, high impact enters effects, and more with pretty minimal effort. Plus it can sometimes be a 5/4 with indestructible, but you frankly couldn’t care much less about that part.

Bounding Krasis: Before THB this had value in pod lines, but now it’s redundancy for them which is ok i guess, but it’s a tutor line, you don’t need redundancy (a little redundancy is a little appreciated though).

Ephara, God of the Polis: Ooooooh fun a way to draw a card a turn or with a good chunk of work checks notes two cards a turn I’m so enthuuuuused.

Frostburn Weird: Why the hell did I agree to making these comprehensive, I want a nap.

Gift of Orzhova: This card’s pretty interesting for the GW auras or bogles decks that I’m expecting to start making their way into the gladiator ecosystem–flying is the cream of the crop, but lifelink gives you pretty insane amounts of time to enact your gameplan before you have to start worrying about pressure, or lets you trivialize the race with their preexisting board, which is a great thing for the bogles decks to do.

Growing Ranks: I think this has to give you a 3/3 ever turn for you to actually be satisfied with it, but that’s not the hardest ask. The issue is really that it makes the token on your upkeep, meaning you have to keep your board up longer before any payoff and your opponent always has the ability to react to the board state you have in order to minimize your gameplan. It’s a bit of a red flag when your opponent playing the game is counter to a card’s performance.

Iroas, God of Victory: I’m pretty confident that this is the best of the OG Theros 15, even though I don’t think it’s the most likely to have a home in gladiator (Godpilled Xenagos already has a home and a very comfortable seat in that home). However, if you’re a RW aggro deck and playing 4 drops, this one is hard to remove and makes it so your creatures just always win combat, between making blocks twice as difficult for opponents and making sure they just don’t die in combat. On top of that, when it’s a creature it effects itself, so it has 7 power, can’t take damage on attacks, and has menace. I’m testing this one in naya bard class, and I’d make a good recommendation that RW decks that focus on turning things sideways start sleeving up this card too.

Karametra, God of Harvests: You don’t need lands after you hit 5 mana, you already (should) have enough to cast all your spells, or maybe all but one of your spells. There is I’m pretty sure no amount of lands you could tutor with this to make me say that it feels worthwhile in any deck in the format.

Keranos, God of Storms: God, I hate that this card was legitimately quite good generically at one point, but we have well outgrown this guy’s mana cost, enough that we can replicate a lot of his function for less or fewer hoops. That said, he's really not embarrassing to play in shells that can consistently draw some extra cards.

Kruphix, God of Horizons: It is legitimately pretty funny that all of the lines on this card are just the most unnecessary words you could imagine. 5 mana for no hand size (something I doubt we would pay 0 mana for) and Horizon Stone (a card you also shouldn’t play, even if you could) is just pretty laughable. Even in a ramp shell where you might store and use excess mana, it’s really hard to imagine that it would be worth a card to make that possible.

Mogis, God of Slaughter: 2 damage is so little these days, especially for it being the only thing that Mogis does. These days, we can do more damage by sneezing and playing like a 2 drop, we don’t need a 4 whose only job is sometimes dealing 2 damage unless it’s more convenient for them to sac a creature they don’t care about.

Nightveil Specter: We’ve come a long way in the decade since this got printed, and now I think if you wanted this card you got your answer 6 months ago with Thieving Aven, or even 5 years ago with Thief of sanity. That said, this card’s very iconic, and isn’t embarrassing to play, even still.

Pharika, God of Affliction: god, this god’s sad. Making a supply of deathtouchy snakes is neat, but being unable to hit your opponent’s yard without giving them the snake is wack, especially when you consider that Deathrite Shaman and Scavenging Ooze both give you the same effect regardless of if you’re using your graveyard or eating your opponent’s.

Phenax, God of Deception: Mill isn’t viable in gladiator unless it’s going infinite, and even then this card is 5 mana to start enabling mill, which is frankly highway robbery in any format but limited.

Rubblebelt Raiders: This era of magic design had a strange love for vanilla or french vanilla creature designs, and this isn’t any exception, and to be clear, I don’t mind that, it just means that a bunch of creatures just read to have keywords beeeg, and that doesn’t quite cut it alone, because you also need the secret keywords kinda-cheap and quickly-kills-your-opponent. These raiders don’t quite have that.

Ajani, Mentor of Heroes: Ajani is kind of underwhelming for being a 5 drop, but he does a lot of things I like in planeswalker design, which are 1) kills your opponent while upticking, 2) giving you card advantage while upticking, and 3) giving you consistent versatility in what you want to do regardless of roughly where his loyalty’s at. All that in mind, Ajani is a great card to distract the opponent while you keep attacking with the enormous creatures you have drawn and pumped up thanks to him, acting as both the source of your opponent’s problems and also a red herring with the actual problem being that you have creatures in your hand, deck, and battlefield. That said, Ajani really needs a preexisting board or a notable lack of pressure, and that with a 5 mana payment is a tough sell.

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver: Ashiok fails some of those tests that Ajani succeeds at, but they are cheap and scary quickly, with their +2 buying a lot of time on a cheap planeswalker while also demanding the opponent keep their loyalty low so you can’t get all the fun things you stole. I don’t love how low-impact ashiok is for the first few turns of existence, though, so I’m not exactly the most excited to be sleeving this card up.

Domri Rade: Domri is a weird card, in the sense that he kind of just runs away with the game when played on turn 2, and gets worse and worse as the game goes on. I’m very hesitant that I’ll play him in decks like Bard class, but in a more traditional stompy gameplan I think he works quite well.

Kiora, the Crashing Wave: Kiora is a Kraken machine, but it runs into the problem where she takes a lot of work to make that happen, and otherwise, she’s arguably just an explore that leaves behind a small speed bump. It could be that I’m looking at her with too much of an aggro-slanted midrange lens, but her +1 is pretty middling to just be paying off with more explores.

Narset Transcendent: Narset doesn’t fit the mold exactly of the era’s planeswalker design, but she makes up for it with the fact that both her first abilities are pretty close to reading draw a card, and that she comes in with SIX FUCKIGN LOYALTY. So, she’s pretty low impact, and she doesn’t do anything herself to really protect herself, but she also has enough loyalty that your opponent has to commit a lot to killing her. 

Sarkhan Unbroken: This is one of the better planeswalker designs to see, and enables you to have a lot of versatility both the turn you use him and thereafter. The + is simple and doesn’t leave room for feelbads, like a lot of the others in this set, and also does a good impression of 5feri. Similarly, making a giant dragon on the - is something I’m very much here for, allowing you to help close out a game or gain a blocker that doesn’t get bolted. Oh, and also, that ultimate just says “win the game” if you include Dragonlord Kolaghan and Terror of Mount Velus in your deck.

Xenagos, the Reveler: This is a card that reads a lot like Burning tree Emissary on a 4 mana planeswalker, where it either reduces its cost by refunding some mana, or starts contributing to the board without downticking. I’m probably going to try this out in Sneak Attack decks, but might also include it in bard class lists for a little bit, as playing this when it upticks for 3+ mana feels really free.

Alive // Well: Neither side of this card is something you want to cast.

Armed // Dangerous: I really wish this were an instant, but there are plenty of threats in blitz decks where Armed is totally acceptable as a sorcery as well.

Aurelia’s Fury: I’m not impressed by the idea of casting this card, but I would love to be proven wrong, especially where this has the versatility between being removal, silence, and/or clearing the way for an alpha strike. I’m just really put off by the fact that RW in addition to the X does a lot to limit what it can remove, who it can tap, and if you have an extra point of damage to throw at the opponent to stop them from casting spells.

Down // Dirty: Neither side of this card is really something you want to cast, though I could reluctantly be convinced of Dirty’s viability (it is, however, worse than your top 3 regrowths, and thus hard to justify).

Far // Away: Both sides of this card are 1 mana more than you’re really willing to spend on them.

Give // Take: Give is unexciting, but on rate. Take is wacky, and I’ll even dare to say, bad.

Jarad’s Orders: Is entomb plus Eldamri’s Call worth a 4 mana sorcery? I don’t think so, in part due to the fact that true costs rise exponentially with mana costs: I’d pay 2 mana for either part of this, but 4 mana is more than double 2 mana, and so what I expect out of my 4 drop is more than just Entomb + Eldamri’s call, and this card is even worse than both of those combined.

Profit // Loss: Both of these cards are within a half mana of being on rate (well, Profit is close), but I don’t think I’m interested in either part of it as a magic card, and the awkward part of fuse, despite it really all being upside, is that the fused card is ultimately just a bit worse than the sum of its parts, and its parts are all individually uninspiring.

Protect // Serve: Neither of these effects are actually interesting to me, especially at their costs. Once again, I think both halves are 1 mana more than they should be, and the fused spell is a bit worse than the sum of both halves.

Rakdos’s Return: Mind Twist gets a lot worse when it isn’t random and scales 1 mana worse. That said, it also punches your opponent in the face, so it gets a solid mark up in my books. Its colors are not the best for an X spell that you want big early, but it can do a lot of harm if your opponent isn’t emptying out their hand by turn 5.

Render Silent: I really don’t think that added silence is enough to add to your cancel to play it over, say, Saruman’s Trickery, and I don’t think our combo players are here to play cancel in the current year.

Toil // Trouble: This is another one that I really wish was an instant (though it would be very cracked at instant speed). As is, neither side is super enticing to me, but I would be lying if I said that hitting an opponent for 4 + their hand size didn’t make my eyebrow raise a hair or two.

Turn // Burn: Even if you’re just consistently playing one side at a time, this card’s surprisingly effective, and this is one of the few cards that actually plays particularly well with the design space of Fuse–it allows UR to have a card it normally wouldn’t see on its own at the cost of a bit less efficiency on the individual components. In this case it’s murder, but also it’s not a huge drop of efficiency, when turn is a spell that you wouldn’t sleeve up, but are happy to cast when it lets you win combat or stop a combo turn, and Burn is a card we are willing to play when it’s connected to other cards as well.

Unexpected Results: Holy shit this card is so bad, I cannot stress this enough, this card sucks ASS. Don’t play it, and then don’t play it 3 more times that you would’ve hit land off it before casting your 3 drop.

Green

Alpha Authority: Giving hexproof is pretty nutty on something with a constellation trigger or similar and it makes the card in GW Aura stompy pretty interesting. Otherwise, I’m not enthused.

Aspect of Hydra: In a very Ultrajelle-styled monogreen list, this card easily can represent 4-5 more power by the time you untap on turn 3, with a ton of GGG cards, this is one that really gives you a payoff for playing cards like Yorvo and MOM Polukranos, and that earns it a thumbs up in my books.

Bassara Tower Archer: More things that say hexproof on them make the bogles/aura stompy deck better and better, and this is an amazing card for the deck that legitimately makes the deck actually look viable.

Boon Satyr: I think this card hasn’t aged particularly well, but it’s definitely not embarrassing to play. Would I play it, even in an enchantress/auras shell? Probably not. Is it very defensible and likely to kill me? Yea, yeah it is.

Commune with the Gods: I don’t think this card is particularly playable in all but a few decks, but decks like 3animator that desperately want to avoid milling Cthonian Nightmare are super happy to see this card. If you’re in a similar boat with an enchantment, this card’s totally defensible, but otherwise you just don’t need this card.

Conclave Naturalists: Reclamation Sage at home ass vibes

Experiment One: This idiot’s pretty good, but it’s a little outclassed in monogreen by a decent spread of cards in the last decade. It’s not bad, and might still be enough in monogreen or counters decks, but it’s not really fighting a downhill battle.

Gladecover Scout: A creature below 3 mana with hexproof is enough to be playable in at least 1 to 2 decks, and while this is not much else, it gets the job done for sure.

Hero of Leina Tower: Sometimes you are in a spot where you could win with a sneeze of a mana sink, but this card both doesn’t make it easy nor exciting to do so. I don’t think I’d play it, but I could see a counters deck that’s trying it and not make a stink about it.

Honored Hydra: I maybe could see this in a dredge list, but 4 mana 6/6 is not as exciting as it used to be, and paying 6 for it is pretty embarrassing.

Hornet Nest: This is a card that I love so goddamn much, but holy shit it’s bad, especially against any deck with plains and/or swamps, and also a good portion of decks with islands outside of that.

Leafcrown Dryad: Man it is not a good look for bestow when this common that’s major ass is one of the better cards with the mechanic I’ve seen.

Mistcutter Hydra: This card’s truly a masterclass in “how much bullshit can we put on a XG hydra and still have it not quite be enough,” and it turns out this is the exact answer, or at least it was in 2021. Now, the bar’s probably a bit higher, but that G pip to keep it always under curve for green is rough.

Nemesis of Mortals: Play this in decks with big graveyards because it’s nearly a Gurmag Angler that doesn’t exile. It’s just a great card that does gross things as long as all the gross things you want are beeeeg

Nessian Asp: not worth the text on this review, but they are relationship goals and also just lil guys

Nissa, Vastwood Seer: It turns out a Civic Wayfinder that is super relevant late game is at least worth considering in lands shells. I don’t particularly think it lands itself in many other decks, but it’s certainly worth thinking about. (Side note: I’ll consider testing this in Bard Class, but after Lukamina started to flounder, I’m not the most optimistic. Saying “draw cards” instead of “discard cards” is a big improvement, though.)

Nissa, Voice of Zendikar: This card was the bee’s knees when OGW was relevant, but that was mainly for being a 3 mana walker that didn’t suck total ass in a sea of cheap walkers that were developed into being total hogwash. Now, making bodies without power on 1 is a bit awkward, boards aren’t quite as wide as they were in BFZ standard, and an ultimate that was a scary inevitability back in 2015 is now a lot more difficult to last until. I think it still has some homes, such as decks like Superfriends+Wraths, where you want any walker that can make bodies to protect itself, but its applications are a lot more narrow now.

Oath of Nissa: This is another card that appeals to like 4 people, but I’m one of those people so LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO!!! This card is great for enchantress and superfriends, where it is a 1 mana cantrip that triggers your constellation effects in the former, and trivializes the biggest pitfall of the latter, which is its many, many double-pipped spells.

Polukranos, World Eater: I love how beeg this guy is, but he definitely has had a tough time staying super relevant in the face of specifically Questing Beat and GGG cost cards. In our format, he’s also going to have an uphill battle fighting for slots taken by Wingbane Vantasaur and the like, making him likely only find a home in ramp-heavy shells, where that Monstrosity ability can reliably proc for 7+ mana, which is largely where I want to see it before I’m happy.

Seed Guardian: This is a very cool, funny guy, but your bar for 4 drops is just so damn high these days, and I think ol seedy is going to be a victim of that.

Shamanic Revelation: This card has a problem of versatility - It’s all focused to one exact purpose: drawing you 30 cards, which means it asks you to make sacrifices and doesn’t provide an out when they can’t be made. When you are behind or rebuilding, this card’s ass. Meanwhile, a card like The Great Henge has the most potential when rebuilding, and otherwise costs you little enough that you don’t have to go all in to still feel like you’re adequately capitalizing on it.

Skylasher: I feel like this card was kind of the start of “how much can we push a card without changing its stats from what’s on rate?” and they’ve now just come to the conclusion that they can make 3/2s and 3/3s for 2 in green instead of throwing 4 things at it trying to make something just exciting enough for people to play standard and no more than that. If you’re playing UG tempo, I could see this card making the cut, but I doubt you’re playing that deck.

Sylvan Caryatid: I am very interested in where people place this relative to other 2 drop dorks, because we’re getting to the point where you might be affording 3 2 drop dorks (and that’s generous), so your options are very wide for a slot that is pretty narrow. That said, I think Sylvan, Paradise Druid, and Fanatic of Rhonas/Bloom Tender is a very nice spread and might just become the standard, ensuring that you will get to play your 4 drops on turn 3 with very limited exceptions at this point.

Sylvan Primordial: I think this is just a card for lands decks, and, while I’ll think about it for sneak attack, I think its only value for that deck is being a big idiot that sneaks in to kill an orb or O-Ring more than ramping at all, and it’s a weird one to be competing with some really impressive threats like primetime, wurmcoil, and carnosaur.

Unravel the Aether: This is a good answer to certain kinds of artifacts and enchantments (gods, the one ring, etc), but we just don’t have enough of those that are worth running a specific disenchant that still leaves them access to it over broader removal or more efficient removal.

Voyaging Satyr: I think I might play this in a lands deck, as long as I’m pretty consistently getting a Nykthos or Lotus Field out. Otherwise, I’m not particularly interested over any other 2-drop dork.

Whisperwood Elemental: I think this card’s way better than its cost and stats belie. It offers really good wrath protection when you’re ahead, and regardless of your board position, it quickly adds to the board and provides a very annoying threat. Its ability being its own sac outlet also means that the opponent essentially has to spend different turns answering Whisperwood and the rest of your board. I think its homes are a bit more narrow than every green midrange deck, but there’s a swath of decks with forests and creatures that should at least think about this in one of their few 5 drop slots.

Woodland Wanderer: I don’t think this card is really interesting in any deck, including 5color slop piles, where it’s just a pile of stats, and really needs to be converged for 4 to be interesting on size.

Avatar of the Resolute: This card’s cracked in counters decks and should be played in them. There’s nothing else to write, it’s sweet. 

Nylea, God of the Hunt: Yeah the formula they followed for the og monocolored gods really sucked, and nylea is one of the worst victims of it, maybe only behind Heliod.

Nylea’s Disciple: This is another centaur which pings my nostalgia meter, but it’s alsoooooooo bad.

Reverent Hunter: This card’s not bad as long as your devotion’s 3+, but it is very bad when played on 2 off a dork, which is like the whole reason you play your huge GGG threats, is because you can play them on 2.

Brood Monitor: This card’s a little interesting and might have some combo/token/sacrifice implications, but if it’s not doing something absurd, it’s not worth playing.

Fog: Don’t play fogs, at least before we’ve added isochron scepter or something functionally similar.

Nissa’s Pilgrimage: The big pull I have for cultivate in this format is that it’s a very cheap and non-greedy way to set yourself up on fixing for the rest of the game. This card forgoes that, with the weird tradeoff of sometimes drawing you an extra land, which doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Skyreaping: I don’t see a reason that you would ever play this card, it’s just so situational for our format.

Stampeding Elk Herd: We’re at the point where your 5 mana 5/5 can just always give your dudes trample, but it is a lot of elk and is great for the oko theme deck.

Gather the Pack: This card’s a weird one to consider, where you can go card positive with it, but it also is about the worst of these kinds of cards in our format, not grabbing either lands or any other type, and relying on a density of instants/sorceries which dilute the amount of creatures available to grab.

The Great Aurora: This is one of my all time favorites, and I actually could see this being worthwhile in some GX ramp decks as a green wrath in a color very lacking in them, where you can also turn excess lands into additional cards. And while it’s very hard to cast in tokens, it counts the tokens shuffled in, so each one will count as an additional card to draw, potentially turn into a land drop, and use to stop any pesky specific permanents.

Hunter’s Prowess: This card’s just too much mana and commitment to one creature for me to be comfortable sleeving it up.

Miming Slime: Yeah, I’m just not a fan anymore of threats that are hyper-dependent on your other threats, and, again, this is particularly bad to play on turn 2, which is a big factor in my choice of green 3 drops.

Natural Slate: I wouldn’t be too shocked to see this in someone’s deck, where it hits orb, most O-rings, and a host of other decent cards, and the upside of costing 1 less than you’re used to is pretty significant.

Colorless/Lands

Bane of Bala Ged: The good ol reliable for when you want to feel the villainy of annihilator but still want to play an absolutely dogwater creature. You can just pass on this one, don’t worry.

Scion of Ugin: sometimes I ask myself why I bother making this comprehensive, but you know what? This is a card in the set, and you’re legally allowed to play it!

Void Winnower: I think this is in an awkward spot in our format, where it doesn’t close out the game fast enough for its high cost, even if it does do wonders when it hits the field. 4 drops are really good, and making them dead in the water is nice, but this card isn’t good for sneak attack and wouldn’t realistically have a good home elsewhere.

Crackdown Construct: I know we got Fumarole, but that combo is not good, and this is the bad card of most of the combos with it.

Darksteel Ingot: You don’t need to play manaliths, and if you want to, you should just play Skyclave Relic instead.

The Chain Veil: I’m still skeptical on if I want to run this in planeswalker decks, because the effect is brutal with 2+ walkers on the field, but it does just cost a billion mana to make work. I think my end result is going to be “keep it if it enables a couple combo lines, and cut it if you’d just be running it for value.”

Haven of the Spirit Dragon: This is the good one! An unclaimed territory is already ok-good in dragons, but more importantly, being a regrowth for a dragon is HUGE. I don’t think that this is that valuable for returning Ugins, but the half of the cracking is well worth the cost of admission if you’ve got a medium of high-value dragons.

Hissing Quagmire: This is one of my favorite creature lands, and it gets the job done at a damn cheap rate. Having a deathtouch blocker for not a ton of mana is big enough that most BG decks that take a turn off or under curve should heavily consider it.

Lumbering Falls: I’m deeply mid on this one–creature lands already have the benefit of dodging half of removal, and so getting one that dodges all of it instead doesn’t actually interest me that much, especially when it represents so little damage compared to Vinestalk.

Needle Spires: Double strike on a creature land is very valuable, and the card gets a lot of value out of a weenie-benefiting board, so stuff like Luminarch Aspirant, anthems, etc. are going to send this land from quite good to game-winning, and only using a land for that is really nice to see.

Shambling Vent: This land’s fine, but it’s small enough that the lifelink is not that interesting, though I do value the low mana cost a bit more than I value the trigger of the restless land, so it probably could make it into a deck or two.

Spawning Bed: I understand why, but the fact that this activation cost is so incredibly high is really painful, especially considering how much I like the design.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: I do not know how to impress upon you that this card is great and you should play it other than saying hell yeah fuck yeah.