Modern Horizons: Preliminary Review Part XV

Winding Way 7.5

Lovely. One of the best support tools green has received. This does so very much and will end up supporting a vast array of decks. First and foremost it is card quality. You get to choose action or choose lands which is what most good card quality really does. Another thing good card quality does is dig into your deck when looking for specific things. This digs as well as most of the best of them. Four deep is solid for two mana, it is Impulse deep, few one drops touch that range and many two drops fall short of it too. This helps fill up the bin which far less card quality effects do. A lot of those that do are either lower potency i.e. digging three deep, or lower range either unable to find lands or much more restricted on what kind of action you can grab. Now this is where it gets really spicy. Winding Way has some pretty reasonable odds on hitting two or more things you named and being very impressive card advantage. If you want to find a land with your early card quality finding two or three is going to be amazing. On the flip side, if you wanted to find land and failed that is really not at that much worse than failing to find a land with any other kind of card quality in that situation. Getting no value from your Winding Way is not what is costing you that game, lack of lands is. Indeed, Winding Way is still a huge help in those cases as it digs your four cards closer to actually finding a land. This is pretty comparable to Grapple with the Past. Both very playable and solid cards that support a lot of builds. Grapple offers a little more security with the recursion element but Winding Way offers way more punch and power with the ability to dig deeper and get actual card advantage. Mulch is pretty good and this is so much more powerful and playable. In a deck with 20 dorks, 16 lands and the rest spells Winding Way is basically a two for one on average in whatever mode you like. Sometimes it will be more! That makes it so much better than Night's Whisper that it is comic. Even at 1.5 lands or 1.2 creatures a go it is still better than Whisper. This gets you what you need and more of it than other cards of the same effectiveness. The only times this is weak is when you have a low creature count and then you don't play it as often. Twelve or more dorks sounds a good starting place for this to be worth playing in most midrange decks without much in the way of graveyard synergy. If you just want the mill and only have a handful of dorks then you can just play this as a Mulch and it is still better. Those few times you need to hit a dork you can name them and hope to get lucky. I want to give this an 8/10 but I do have a habit of getting a little over enthusiastic about cheap card quality. Having recently trimmed Adventurous Impulse from the drafting cube I am reluctant to rate this as high as I want.


Twin-Silk Spider 1.5

Three mana for a Giant Spider spread over two bodies, and with the potential perk of an EtB effect to milk. This is pretty low powered for cube but it is still generally an OK card. When it is the right kind of support tool it has a chance of seeing play. Best odds for that are with a tribal spider deck! More upfront kick than Penubra Spider but a whole lot less value overall.











Trumpeting Herd 0

All of Call of the Herd for the bargain price of 4 mana! While this is reasonable value it is painfully slow and vulnerable. Your turn four play is a bad Hill Giant. You can make that tempo loss back with the rebound on the next turn but it is all a bit stars needing to line up. So many things make this a do nothing, both in value and tempo. The ceiling isn't even that good. I think in most cases a vanilla four mana 5/5 non-token is getting more done for you at less risk. Not a place you want to be in cube.


Saddled Rimestag 2

In a zoo deck this is broadly going to be a 4/4 for two which is great. It looks a lot like some of the landfall cards out there. Outside of a zoo kind of deck you are not going to have the creature density to have this be consistently big nor will you really have the theme to suitably abuse a big vanilla dork. This is narrow and pretty fair by cube standards but it is still playable. I recall people losing their minds over the power of Watchwolf and now here I am calling a two mana 4/4 playable!










Rime Tender 1.5

This is fine at doing one thing, it will be some awkward backup for untap effects in the odd place.







Viashano Sandsprinter 2

A bit fair in function all told despite very elegant design. Really you need a deck that wants to fill up the bin with dorks while also being a heavy red aggro deck for this to look like an include. It is not quite potent enough at what it does for you. Cycling is at it's least valuable on a mid or late game proactive aggro card. Those are the meat of what you want to be finishing the game with and so in theory you shouldn't under normal circumstances want to cycle them later on. Certainly you want to cycling anything expensive in a mana screw but the tempo hit from doing so is a significant blow. When aggro and building with cycling you want to tip the scales in the other direction.



Vengeful Devil 6

This might just be good enough. A cheap and hasty pinger with the drawback of needing morbid to actually ping. Red is good at killing things and fairly good at getting its own stuff dead as well. The power on this is lower than something like a Sharpshooter but it is far better suited to the mana cost. Usually we see this effect in comparable cards between 3 and 4 rather than 2 and 3. With most pingers being 1/1s or smaller you are rather happier investing two mana. The risk is far lower while the power is only a bit lower. Pingers are generally polar cards, they are vulnerable but do a lot of work if they stick. You can afford to lose some top end performance to reduce the severity of a bad performance. Haste also lowers risk further and increases your odds on doing some work with the Devil. Once in play your opponent will be able to play around it to some extent but on the first ping they will have no idea. All in all this seems like a fair and playable pinger. I think it should be comparable to Gideon's Lawkeeper in power and playability, perhaps a touch behind.


Quakefoot Cyclops 1

This is pretty good for this kind of card. It is basically a Stun that is both uncounterable and more importantly, playable when you have no targets. You can literally just cycle this! The only place this doesn't measure up well to Stun and even Renegade Tactics is that it is a creature. The others trigger things like Young Pyromancer and reduce the cost of Bedlam Reveler. They are more commonly desired for being cheap cycling cards of the appropriate type than they are for the effect of stopping blockers. Smoldering Spires, Ahn Crop Crasher and Earthshaker Khenra are the most played can't block cards in red with Frenzied Goblin still cropping up now and again with the most caps already under the belt. These are all cards that do something else you want rather than just can't block effects. While Cyclops does have a dork mode it is shocking. Without haste it is really unlikely to be that useful. Not only is a 5 mana 4/4 poo but not lining up with the blocking prevention means you are really only likely to get value from one or the other in any good time frame. If you do get value from both it is slowly and you will likely have some dead attackers sitting about. Despite sucking a 4/4 off the top is still a thing and better than a land or a Stun and there will be plenty of times taking out two blockers for one turn wins it for you. This all means that this Cyclops does significantly outclass Stun but I still don't really anticipate seeing it played in cubes. Impressive power, playability, depth and design for a common at least
.


Shatter Assumptions 1

Interesting sideboard card in modern but quite possibly still too slow there at three. In cube this can only be played as a sideboard card and certainly has no place in a drafting cube. It has a tiny chance of some action in some rotisserie sideboards. You need such a high hit rate with this (over two cards per cast) for it to be good that it is only good against decks that are heavily gold or colourless in the non-land area while also retaining decent hand size in the mid game.









Return from Extinction 1

These draw two for two cards that recur things from the bin are just too narrow. While it is very easy to build a deck where this gets two things back consistently it is very hard to build a deck that allows for that on turn two. Cheap draw is usually something you want early. Night's Whisper is a great turn two play in a lot of cases. This isn't. Find // Finality is also rather more appealing than this even without green. I can't see this getting run despite seemingly reasonable power.

Modern Horizons: Preliminary Review Part XIV

Mirrodin Besieged 6

This is scary. Either it is a weaker Sai. Master Thopterist that is hard to kill or it is a looter that can win the game. In a self mill deck full of Shriekhorn and Mesmeric Orb this can be a quick combo kill. In a slower artifact deck it can be anything and everything you want or need it to be. The card is narrow but it absolutely raises the eyebrow! Compare it to Laboratory Maniac which needs not only to be alive but also draw a card while having done the full deck of mill and draw. In a deck with 20 artifacts, 16 lands and 4 other spells Besieged is able to win on average with only 75% of the deck milled or drawn (assuming you are able to get the artifacts cast and drawn into the bin as well). That percentage gets better for Mirrodin Besieged as you increase deck size as well. I would certainly rather be vulnerable to graveyard removal than creature removal. If you are getting attacked in the yard you do at least have the token mode as an alternate win. A big fan of this card, will be playing it a lot with Sai and Urza. Marked down for being artifact heavy decks only and nothing else. In an artifact themed cube this is probably a premium card. Sai is more powerful than this because you get all of Sai when you cast him. This however seems like it might be better. It would be more powerful if you got both modes at once that is for sure! Having the option on whichever you need most makes this safer and more suitable than Sai and still with decent enough power when cast in the artifact heavy decks. This is why I think it might actually be better which is high praise indeed, Sai is absolutely mental in artifact heavy decks.


Smiting Helix 2

With isn't this a funny little thing. The 3B cost upfront is pretty ghastly but not prohibitive. A Lightning Helix that you play from the bin on the other hand is pretty exceptional in terms of ceiling. Sure, it takes more work to get there but it is exploitable work. Sorcery is a downside too but pretty irrelevant when it is effectively competing with "draw a card" which is the difference between this and Lightning Helix when you flash it back. So, that leaves us with a card that is exceptional in a deck with access to red and white mana, ideally some black as well, and then an absolute tonne of discard or self mill effects. Mardu Pyromancer in modern is the sort of deck we are talking about. Smiting Helix would be cute in that sort of thing. Outside of that it is a bit dodgy to support and uncomfortable to play. Make no mistake, the ceiling of being a two mana Lightning Helix that also effectively draws a card is pretty staggering. On average a lot worse than Lightning Helix in a limited setting, and certainly far narrower, it is all about that ceiling case for this oddball card which you get to by building a very specific sort of deck.


Watcher for Tomorrow 8.5

It took me a while to spot why this card isn't just better than Snapcaster Mage! Hidden, ironically, in the hideaway reminder text is the clause stating that it enters play tapped. Not being able to block right away with this on death trigger dork slows it down a lot. It is far more Cabal Therapy(pist) food, Aluren support, flicker abuse, Recurring Nightmare fodder, etc (i.e. combo and synergy) than it is a nice midrange all round value dork. Basically this is an Impulse on the back end of a 2/1 for two. Two mana is the cost of Impulse! Puts Eternal Witness to shame. It is a "leaves the battlefield" trigger as well making it hard to disrupt in any way. It is just a two for one in waiting, and potentially more with the right synergy. The comes into play tapped is a big deal but it doesn't stop this being top tier. It would just have been Snapcaster levels of good for cube if it had come in untapped. As it stands it is still looking like being one of the premium two drops in the cube. A not irrelevant body that you don't want to kill, can't stop getting a good card, and if not killed might just get out of hand with things like Restoration Angel. This is a cheap and powerful two for one. The delay is fairly minor, either it is a Standstill of sorts, or it is a Baleful Strix of sorts. If you don't get your card by the following turn you are buying a dangerous amount of time. Planeswalkers need to be attacked and people, especially those packing blue spells, need killing quickly and that all plays hard into this cards favour. If you only got the card when this died I would rate it at least one lower, perhaps even two less. That safety is massive. You can even stockpile cards away safely from things like Extract or more relevantly for modern, Surgical Extraction. This is on the slow side for modern and relatively low power even for EDH. Cube is really where this will shine brightest. A perfect curve and setup play offering tempo and value. This card being as good as it is makes cards with ninjitsu a whole bunch better. As does the scrying faerie one drop. All quite scary. Perhaps Deep Hours is coming back despite my mocking!


Mind Rake 2.5

Interesting and somewhat versatile. Just not really something that there is much call for. Mind Rot is fairly poo and the other mode is rather narrow. Good disruption and value tool in decks that really really want to discard things from their hand but that is the only place I really see this, hellbent lists perhaps but they sound decidedly weak. Sadly this is still also behind the que to to things like Putrid Imp and Zombie Infestation without a reasonable supporting crew of other discard effects so as to make this count. Nice occasional redundancy for Collective Brutality in that instance.








Everdream 1

A nice rework of Evermore that is actually playable. Both for having things to actually splice to and for being playable even when you don't. This is most alike to Whispers of the Muse. It is a mana sink card draw tool or a cycler. It is arguably better at the former and worse at the latter. Arguably better as it is "only" three mana compared to six to get Everdream back compared to Whispers however you still need a spell and to play that spell so unless it is two or less mana you are still needing the same total. This feels too slow to cut it in any sort of cube setting and probably only gets love in EDH. Shame as I rather like it.




Marit Lage's Slumber 5

This is a little like a Search for Azcanta in that it is a two mana enchant that provides ongoing card quality to a point at which it cashes in for some payoff. Rather than a card advantage land you get a 20/20 flying indestructible for your troubles with this. While a little easier to disrupt it is a lot more direct and threatening. Other areas in which this is unlike Search include the greater need of significant build consideration, the effort needed to flip (which is rather more for Slumber too), the fact you are not assured a scry effect each turn, and the only positive flip side of that which is that you can get multiple scry per turn and indeed get one right away too. So, all things considered, while this resembles Search for Azcanta it will neither see the same level of play nor attain the same sorts of power when played. Getting to ten snow permanents is going to take a long time. That is pretty much getting to nine basic lands at which point the Marit Lage token is a lot less impressive. There are some good snow permanents that are non-lands but beyond Arcum's Astrolabe and Coldsteel Heart they all seem to be or contain green. Playing all of them is only about 5 extra cards too and generally ones that are easy to remove. Things like Rampant Growth simply seem like a better way to empower this. All told that makes it seem like a Simic ramp card. I will try and build with this in mono blue but it will be a painful slow deck using things like Time Warp basically just as slow Explores. This isn't viable for a drafting cube because in those you are basically just replacing snow permanents with basic lands and that means this is painfully slow, restrictive and a little narrow. This is the big payoff for the snow type it would seem but the small scale payoff in Coatl is by far the more powerful and relevant of the two for almost all formats. This not scaling at all well with itself makes it even less appealing to build around in a non-singleton setting.


Thornado 5

I like this a lot in much the same way that I like Dissenter's Deliverance. Sadly this is cost in such a way that it is a reasonably big burden on your build. You have to feel weak to fliers or really need more instants in your (delirium) deck to play this I think. Cycling two is quite a big tempo hit and a Murder is hardly an impressive removal spell either. This may still make it in the cube with green having little better options and it being a safe include but that won't mean it is powerful, just a suitable plug. This is basically a bad sideboard card you can run main.






Soulherder 4

Too narrow for the cubes unless the heavily support flicker mechanics as a theme. If so then this is a perfect fit, much like it is for a couple of singleton constructed lists. Mainly spirits and flicker ones. Assuming you have something relevant to flicker such as a Wall of Omens then this is a good starting point of Grey Ogre plus draw a card while being very dangerous to leave in play both for value and tempo reasons. Soulhearder is an impressive threat. Sadly it also has a floor so low it hurts. Make this without a board and you just got a three mana Wandering One. Oops. As such it is only playable in decks that really appropriately house it.



Rotwidow Pack 4

Nice design but the cost is rather too much to make it more than a gold Giant Spider in most cases. Where I would strongly consider this is in any sort of deck based around spiders, Spider Spawning or even just Ishkanah, the Graf Widow. Making a 1/2 reach for 5 mana is poor but doing that and making them lose four or more life is suddenly very appealing. You can near one shot people with this. It gets out of hand very fast, lots of life loss, lots of defensive spiders to clog the board. So in decks with lots of mana and lots of dorks in the bin this is great (hello Crypt of Agadeem). In most other cases this is looking too fair. Not quite a Scarab God!






Moonblade Shinobi 3

Cute card and fairly comparable power level to Ninja of the Deep Hours for limited play. On the clunky side but that is somewhat accepted when playing with ninjitsu cards. While this is fine on average it doesn't have that exciting of a ceiling compared to alternatives and will likely be edged out of a lot of 40 card singleton ninja decks. Still a lock in for the 100 cards one I imagine with such a small pool of options. This is another semi-Rabblemaster card in blue. The clock isn't amazing but the value is decent. Really all just a bit fair these days to make too many waves despite being pretty unique as far as blue cards go.




Throatseeker 0

This seems terrible. A 3/2 for three that provides a tiny amount of lifelink to it and other ninjas? This will wind up being a Grey Ogre a lot of the time. Low power, low threat and low utility. Bad in general and still bad in a ninja deck.













Phantom Ninja 1

Probably never needing to go this deep in 40 card but it is nice to enable ninjas and to scale with a lot of the tribal ninja buffs. This is even somewhat of a threat!




Alpine Guide 4

Wood Elves in red with +2/+2 in stats! The cost for that massive tempo injection? The loss of the value and ramp if and when the Guide dies, which he well might as he must attack as much as able. Technically also the mountain comes in tapped which is also a downside compared to Wood Elves but a pretty minor one when we are talking sacrificing lands or being three times the size! Wood Elves are good and so in theory so is this. The concern is that it is not offering something that is really wanted. Aggressive red decks are not looking to ramp on turn three. Midrange and control decks are but they are rather less in the market for a suicidal 3/3 dork. There is certainly a snowball component to this card as if it is not dealt with it is very impressive. If the ramp and tempo it provides carry, say you bust out that Glorybringer a turn sooner and thus get to freely attack, then you are just so far ahead thanks to Guide that the game is likely over. Snowball cards are not great for game play but they are often quite powerful. This is certainly intriguing. It should have a highly varied performance. I don't know where I will play it though so I might struggle to find that out. Test worthy for sure, gut says it will be crappy but logic suggests it will be very good in the right place.

Modern Horizons: Preliminary Review Part XIII

Tectonic Reformation 6

Red gets yet another tool to dispose of excess lands (with Throes of Chaos being the other) and this one seems rather more rounded and playable. This is cheap enough to cycle itself that you are fine with it in a mana screw. It is cheap enough to deploy and allows for cheap enough land cycling that you are also most happy with this for any deck looking to go a little longer without a tonne of mana sinks. This is a fair card to say the least. It is always losing tempo and often losing card advantage. I feel like those are going to cost it enough that it won't see play in many decks despite being a really useful little tool. It is just a bit slow to provide the value you want. Red has enough looting and rummage effects now that are better than this in most cases that I expect to see this infrequently. More of a synergy card for use with Splendid Reclamation effects that a thing you just play to improve your late game.


Echo of Eons 4

While this is getting people rather excited I think it is a bit overrated. It is pretty hard to abuse this in modern. It is symmetrical, slow and always leaves you at a mana disadvantage compared to your opponent. While it is more impressive at 3 mana than at 6 that means both exiling it and getting it in the bin in the first place. This all chips away at this card relative to Time Twister, which itself is a touch overrated. Certainly it is a very powerful effect but you can only play it in decks built around abusing such things. When you take away the broken mana producers the value of a Twister plummets. I expect to see Time Spiral get much more play in cube than this. The scariest thing about this card is the new Narset! And really that is just because Narset is really scary. This neither replaces Time Spiral or Twister and is better than neither. Echo of Eons performs a somewhat different role and does have a place in cube play but it is fairly fringe. Commit // Memory feels like a better card overall in doing the role of this. EDH is a bit slower so I imagine it will be great there and other eternal formats can play multiple copies of Lion's Eye Diamond which is really the thing that makes this scary there. I am somewhat expecting one of those to get banned but I am no expert on those formats. Perhaps it is just fine, perhaps there is plenty of anti-storm and anti-graveyard stuff on the go there that this is fine with LED in the meta.


Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis 3

A little too demanding for your run of the mill drafting cube but outstanding in an appropriate list. Anything with a high dork count and good self mill and Hogaak is looking great. He reminds me of Scourge of Nel Toth. Both big finishers you can play from the bin at nicely low costs. Both need two dorks in play too! Convoke on a big threat is a little win more and delve in a self mill deck is often a big burden lowering things like unearth and turning off delirium. I like this a lot but in practice it is just redundancy at the top end for a tiny subset of archetypes. Cool card and cool design sufficiently that I will build around it a bit.






Unsettled Mariner 3.5

This will mostly wind up in tribal builds that have UW tempo components as well as the odd non-tribal UW tempo deck. Perhaps we will even see a Bant hatebears deck in which this would likely be a feature. While this is a reasonably annoying card it is not very threatening. If you make something actually threatening then it will get killed and the extra mana will get paid. It is not enough of a tax to deny all that much nor will it come up frequently enough to have been worth it. I think you want two or more extra payments from this before it can be considered to have done good work. The bear body really needs lords or equipment to get much done either. Either you over extend into mass removal or you are held off with a 2/3. Mostly I still prefer Kira to this. The disruption is much more meaningful and the body does more work. All told I prefer Spellskite and Thalia to this in most cases although we are moving further away in terms of comparable cards.


Defile 4

Hard to chose between this and Disfigure. This has lovely scaling while probably doing enough early most of the time. Disfigure however has a much more appealing floor and requires no extra support and consideration from your mana base. As it stands there has been a stark shift away from conditional cheap removal towards more reliable and costly options. That does not bode so well for either Defile or Disfigure! I don't see this making waves in any drafting cube nor even being that exciting in a mono black control deck. It will be good but not so good that it is a reason to be doing anything specifically for it!






Faerie Seer 5

Well this takes a huge dump on Augury Owl and Flying Man at the same time. This is a premium ninjitsu enabler and a fine one drop faerie you can use to fuel Spellstutter Sprite and Mistbind Clique. In singleton the big problem facing faeries is lack of good one drops and this plugs that hole very nicely. While this does a load of fantastic things in synergy decks I am still not sure it is doing quite enough to see much love in the drafting cube. It is probably just another Sigiled Starfish!








Universal Automaton 1.5

Another 1 drop faerie! Sadly a very below par one. I can't think of a tribe that is so desperate for one drops that this gets a look in but hard to fully rule it out of seeing any play at all. Cheap goes a very long way and this is clearly the cheapest way to get all the creature types!










Magmatic Sinkhole 3

This is sort of a Murderous Cut meets Hero's Downfall but made red. This kills most things and it will do so cheaply. Red is pretty good at filling up the bin too so it can be quickly as well. There are a few issues with this card however. One is that red loves to use the bin with lots of flashback cards and things that otherwise use it as fuel. Is that extra couple of damage worth the delay on usefulness, the extra resource and setup cost, or the lack of ability to target players compared to most burn? The answer to all of those has to be yes for it to make the cut and that just isn't going to be the case anywhere near enough in the drafting cube. Certainly there will be the odd deck you draft as well as plenty you could construct where this is ideal but most draft decks will just much prefer Searing Spears.




Geomancer's Gambit 2

This is basically Field of Ruin but translated into Stone Rain format. It is a low card cost way to deal with a non-basic land or a naughty way to punish basic land light mana bases. I like the idea of it with Flagstones of Trokair simply as a colour shifted Rampant Growth effect! Cute but hardly an abusive synergy. This is a useful card but in singleton it is not going get much action. In formats with few basic lands it is going to lend to some interesting new Conley Woods brews!





Ephemerate 4

Well this is very efficient indeed. Pair this with something simple like a Wall of Omens and you have yourself a very tidy little draw two for W. It is one of the few one off spells (technically a two off thanks to the rebound) I would consider running in a flicker deck due to how versatile and efficient it is. Obviously it can simply be held as a way to protect a card rather than just blown for whatever EtB value generators you have out. I fear white has too few good EtB effects to reliably abuse this in cube as well as better tools to protect dorks. As such I only really see this making it into constructed flicker decks. Still a big win for them.







Reap the Past 1

Part Braingyser and part Season's Past yet broadly worse than both. You need to be in Gruul and have a bin full of things you want and a bunch of mana before this is good. As such it is mostly just bad. Too powerful and unique to rule out. Recursion effects are not unlike tutor effects in singleton in that they are rarely absolutely unplayable. I would strongly consider this in a Niv-Mizzet Reborn deck for example. A card that only makes the cut in a meme deck because Gruul has so for suitable cards!

Modern Horizons: Preliminary Review Part XII

Endling 1

If it were not for the zombie tag I might well write this off entirely. It is a Hill Giant without mana up and it is far easier to deal with than most of the cards of this nature. This is not the reliable game ending threat that we usually get with our -ling cards. This is just annoying in combat and versatile. It is not all that efficient or high tempo. A five one menace attacking on turn five is not a frightening prospect. Especially when tying up four mana to do so with undying protection up. Seems garbage.









Dead of Winter 3

This is potentially very impressive. It is pretty much a Mutilate for one less black mana. It doesn't have the same cute land cheats with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth but we can probably live with that if we are getting a juicy three mana Wrath for our troubles. While this is very strong if all your lands are snow and even more impressive if you can add to that count with the odd snow permanent extra it does rather make it a mono black Wrath like Mutilate. As soon as you touch non-snow lands the reliability and scaling power of this start to really suffer. If you don't touch non-snow lands your multicoloured deck will have a horrible mana base. This makes it too narrow for the drafting cube but a strong option for any mono black control lists that gets done.


On Thin Ice 7

Unlike Dead of Winter this is a card you can actually run in a multicoloured deck. You only need one snow land to enchant and you don't need it right away as is the problem with some of the other snow dependent one drops in this set. Providing you have half your lands as snow or a third and a boat load of dig and draw then you will be totally fine to run this. The only thing I can see making this bad is if there is a big punishment for playing snow basics instead of normal ones. Seems unlikely for cube but if it ever does happen this will drop off in value. As it stands this is pretty much just a Journey to Nowhere for half the price. Sounds pretty cube worthy to me. It competes with Declaration in Stone as a removal spell more than anything else and I suspect it is going to get a touch more play being that much better tempo and that much less likely to give away card advantage.


Pashalik Mons 6.5

Nice homage card. Also nice goblin card. This single-handedly makes goblin aristocrats a really big deal. The passive is scary good and makes cards like Goblin Bombardment and Sharpshooter utterly terrifying. The activated ability is a reworked Goblin Warrens and fairly well suited to what Pashalik is about. Left unchecked with some mana to spare goblin tokens and damage are happening. Great mana sink mode for this package deal card. It doesn't matter so much that it is not the most efficient way to spend four mana. A ping and a 1/1 is pricey despite being good. The thing is that you are playing Pashalik for the passive and so the activated is all just on-theme bonus. Despite being a tribal card I think red is goblin heavy enough that this will perform well on average in drafting cubes. It is potent enough to be in the running for any kind of goblin deck regardless of the sub-theme and is the undisputed trump card in goblin aristocrats. Red is flush with nutty good three drops presently so this will have to out perform expectation in a limited setting to retain a drafting cube slot. Even if it doesn't it will be a mainstay of many singleton constructed decks so we will not miss out on this fellow!


Llanowar Tribe 7.5

Well this is ramp. Holy shit. Pound for pound this is up there with some very big names. This is doing Gilded Lotus and Thran Dynamo levels of ramp at rather less of a price. It is doing the work of Mana Vault or Grim Monolith without restrictions on untapping. This is fairly well locked to green with the GGG price tag and it is both slower than artifact ramp courtesy of summoning sickness, and also typically more vulnerable to removal. Despite all these things this card is nuts. You can play seven drops on turn three with ease using this. It almost feels as if Tron decks are simply going to be outclassed by green ramp decks! While a creature tag is broadly considered a disadvantage on a ramp card of this power it is still a three mana 3/3 and actually has a fairly significant effect on the board as that. I think this will outclass Rofellos in my cube. Rofellos dies easily and does nothing as a dork other than die. This Tribe isn't so fussy about what kind of lands gave you green making it much more playable and it does rather more as a dork. Impressive card. Three for three is just so much!


Answered Prayers 3

A bit of redundancy for Ajani's Welcome style effects that also does some reasonable backup work as a 3/3 flying beater. This is too inconsistently a threat to play it just as a threat, you need to actively want the lifegain or perhaps enchantment elements of the card. Fine building tool to help support some exotic decks.















Twisted Reflection 0

Despite being a design triumph this simply doesn't have the power or playability for cube use.




Vesperlark 4

Mini-Reveilark! Generally cheaper is better. If you just want something a bit like Reveillark, as opposed to specifically it for a combo purpose, then Vesperlark is going to be better. You will use it much faster and more often and as such it will have at least as much effect on the game as well as a greater option density. The stats on this are not great but then that wasn't the bag of Reveillark either. Flicker abuse, recursion and value was what Reveillark was about and this is much the same. It is less value but still a value card. It is likely a lot more value if you set about abusing with flicker effects because of the cost difference. The relatively lowered evoke price is nice too, it means you can actually do some abusive things with this in combination with cards like Pentavus to cheat in a fatty. While this card has ranging application from aggressive white decks through midrange value flicker decks all the way off to wacky combo reanimate I think it is too low powered for the drafting cube. A three mana 2/1 flier that replaces itself with something small, if at all, is just not blowing any minds. It needed to much more reliably get something if played early or at least be a bit more powerful!



Tribute Mage 5.5

Probably a bit better than Trophy Mage although still just not matching up to Trinket Mage. Trinket Mage just has a vast array of targets covering a broad selection of effects, many of which scale, and most of which have way more immediacy than two drops. In a drafting cube that is mostly just mana rocks and Jitte. Good but not enough variation. Mostly this will see play in combo decks where it finds one or more of the parts. Thopter Foundry Sword of the Meek springs to mind. Tutoring is always good and this is a tried and tested fair form of tutoring.







Cordial Vampire 4

This is pretty nuts for a vampire tribal deck and pretty useless outside of one. While this does still buff up itself when things die the low stats and lack of keywords just make this easily dealt with and often a poor late game top deck or early curve play. If it manages to buff a couple of other dorks as well as itself it is going to get out of hand very fast. The trigger is from all dorks dying as well making combat a total nightmare. Sac outlets and removal, even things like first strike, are going to make this pretty obnoxious. It will be an Overrun for vampire decks if they have a sac outlet too. A build around card that needs setup but provides massive payoff potential.











Hall of Heliod's Generosity 6

Lovely! Just the thing to help support some of the more exotic enchantment based decks for singleton formats. This won't see quite as much play as Academy Ruins but not wildly far behind. A little narrow to be worth it in drafting cubes but a most welcome addition that will make a lot of low tier things a lot more viable.







Shenanigans 1.5

I am not expecting to ever play this. It is a hard artifact disruption card but it just seems bad compared to better spot removal or more powerful mass removal effects in red. Perhaps in the sideboard of a deck that wants to fill up the bin and has some artifact heavy lists to play. Not being instant makes this so bad as a disruption tool against so much ranging from combo through to equipment.

Modern Horizons: Preliminary Review Part XI

Kaya's Guile 3

Cute card but no Kolaghan's Command. The issue this has is that most of the value and tempo are tied up to the Edict mode. If you don't force them to sac a guy then your card is not really worth what you are paying for it on average. Certainly there are times that removing a graveyard or gaining 4 life is all you really care about and it will win the game but mostly these are minor disruptions. The issue with the value all being tied to the Edict is that often your opponents will have crappy tokens. It is pretty hard to engineer the Edict you want without time and support, which is an issue. Cards like this should be the support, they should not need it. Sometimes the best you will be able to do with this card is kill a 1/1 token and get a 1/1 token. Sad to say I think that will be the most common "best" option for this which is why I am so down on it. The entwine effect doesn't really improve it that much. Double the cost to get the two least useful abilities? Not really interested. If you can't get the Edict to work for you are three mana, it not working for you at six isn't a solution. This is still very playable (for a gold card) but I just don't expect it to come close to some of the more boring removal spells on offer in terms of being a challenge for a drafting cube slot. In constructed events you are rarely going to be so pushed for space that you condense your life gain and graveyard hate into one card. Consecrate // Consume just feels like it does this cards job more effectively.



Valiant Changeling 1

Seems a bit too much in need of support for the payoff. This is not exciting until it costs three really. To do that you will need at least two other dorks, more often three or four. That is a gross over extension and this is exactly the wrong kind of threat to be making when you are extended or extending! A vanilla 3/3 doublestrike for  2WW probably isn't good enough for the drafting cube these days which really guts this cards chances.










Bladeback Sliver 2.5
Enduring Sliver 2

Mostly just bears with the sliver tag. Neither of these effects are what you want to be doing in a sliver deck and so these are mostly just cheap meat to fill up with. Too many good slivers in cube for these to excite in a 40 card deck but some potential in EDH to pad out the curve. Potentially some synergy uses too but not interesting enough to go into.



Crashing Footfalls 6

Interesting new tool to abuse with things like As Foretold, Electrodominance etc. Footfalls remains powerful at RR or on turn three and/or when it costs you two cards to play. It even seems fine as a thing to simply suspend. It seems comparable to Ancestral Visions in this latter regard and more powerful to cheat out. A pair of meaty token dorks do lose value as the game goes later. Trample is great on these big tokens but they are still on the vulnerable side. Lacking immediate impact is the mean issue with Footfalls. This is especially the case when you conventionally suspend it as your opponent has all the time they need to prepare. In a deck rife with effects that provide haste this is a lot better. The other big issue for this card is much the same as with Ancestral Visions but a little worse and that is simply that it is a completely garbage top deck. Draw this in the mid to late game and it frequently won't do a jot for you. This will make it appeal a little less to decks without ways to cheat it out. Blue is a lot better suited to handling dud draws than green is. Still, overall I think you can probably just run this in a lot of places. It is such a low investment with such a high payoff that why not! Far more games are won and lost with everyone still having action than go to topdeck mode. In a format where that is the case this seems good assuming the game is averaging over five turns, which again is a tick for cube. Good to combo, good to just play, and fairly fair in both camps.



Icehide Golem 6

Nice little incentive card here. Totally safe to print as well what with all the best aggro decks in modern having such exotic mana bases, not to mention higher power level one drops. You need to be running most to all of your lands as snowcovered basics, or at least just the snowcovered bit, to run this in your list. That isn't a huge ask for the mono colour aggressive cube lists out there but I actually can't see me running this without having some artifact or snow synergy outside of a blue list. All the other colours can do better than this in house. If not directly so then with synergy or at least the freedom to play some more interesting lands. Sadly you probably want things like artifact lands if you are packing artifact synergies which makes this less likely to see action. Still, a one mana 2/2 with little to no drawback has never not seen play before. If this does in drafting cube it will be much like Rakdos Cackler. Suitable and playable filler  rather than actually all that exciting.



Arcum's Astrolabe 6?

Prophetic Prism for one less if you can find the snow mana. Basically all the same kinds of stipulation apply as before with Icehide Golem. Awkwardly however this is a fixing effect which is not needed in mono decks and super hard to support in multi-coloured lists as dual lands are not so snowy. These kinds of cards see a lot of love in artifact combo decks but that buts up with the issue of artifact synergy lands also not being snow. Very cheap and efficient card that will still see loads play when mana bases allow for it. It will see even more if cost reduction effects work on it like Etherium Sculptor and Helm of Awakening.







Ruination Rioter 3

This has quite the wide range in terms of power. It can be a Grisly Bear or it can just win the game. This feels like it might legitimately lead to some self mill combo kills. Sadly this has a lot less hope in 40 card decks with them not having enough lands to support a kill from 20 in most cases. Rioter is not an all in card either as so many which have combo potential are. You can simply play this in a list with a load of sac lands or looting effects and it will perform very well. I don't think you can come close to doing that reliably enough in the drafting cubes to be worth it, even if it were not a gold card. In constructed formats however this has a world of potential.



Ore-Scale Guardian 1

More lands in the bin matters cards which is a theme I like. This however is not the payoff I am looking for really. At two mana this is great and at three it is good depending on how much effort and time it took to get there. This at four mana is fine and there after becomes fairly poor. Unlike Rioter this has a very capped upper end. Unlike Rioter this has a shockingly bad floor. This is only playable in a deck that not only consistently has a bin full of lands but also thematically wants a 4/4 flying hasting beater. That is not really a thing as yet and this isn't an incentive to try and make it a thing.








Mist-Syndicate Naga 7.5

This can get out of hand pretty fast. I am reticent to call it the blue Rabblemaster but it is still the closest comparison on offer. This kills faster than any other blue dork on curve I can think of. This gets out of hand far quicker than Rabblemaster too, it is more like a Pack Rat in that regard. You need to get them all else they might all just spring up again! So this kills in a clean 3, 6, 12 damage output over three turns which is turn six on a ninjitsu play and turn seven if raw dogging. This is aggressive and dangerous and highly un-blue in that regard. A bit of evasion and protection and this is a really potent win condition. This will do more for aggro blue decks than most other blue cards. Blue is able to provide both evasion and protection with ease, it is the scary threats they have always lacked. The Naga should provide value fairly reliably if the ninjitu is supported well. All copies of this do really need clearing up and short of a few ideal cards like Forked Bolt, will require mass removal or a two for one. Failure to do so will just leave you open to dying to a swarm of these damn things. I am a little scared of this card. It looks pretty good and if it lives up to that then it is quite a snowbally card. I find cards that snowball tend to not provide the best games when they win. I think it is fairly safe to say that if two of these hit you at once or one consistently hits you for three turns that you are probably losing. Mass removal is often going to be the only answer to this you have that isn't too backbreaking. Imagine having to use things like Vindicate to kill a Naga token... vomit.


Throes of Chaos 2

Lovely card design here. A very interesting way to allow for a deck to curtail floods. You can just build a deck that curves to four and play this and never have a dead draw (if you can find it in time!) It is similar to having all your lands cycling for one without having to invest any deck slots in it. There are some upsides to cascade such as Crashing Footfalls but there are also some drawbacks. You have curve considerations, reactive, conditional and situational card considerations and so forth. For the first reason alone you are actually much more like cycling for two or more mana than one. You can't just play three drops! This seems all too fair to just play it and I think will only get any attention when cascade is being abused somehow. In cube and modern at least, in EDH I rate this a lot higher as there is so much more time to ramp up your mana and then dispose of excess lands.