Kaldheim Preliminary Review Part XIV

 

Vault Robber 2

Love it but sadly too low power and slow to be playable. One of the costs to make a treasure need to go, perhaps more. The Dwarf tribal deck at least looks like it will want this what with it having a treasure theme and few good low end cards. 

Fearless Liberator 2

A bad version of the white boast token producer one drop. Mostly because scaling up vanilla beaters isn't where you want to be but also because this is just far less mana efficient. Tribal card only although looking good due to the repeatedly mentioned poor quality in the tribe at present. 

Scorn Effigy 1

Such an elegantly designed card and showcase for the foretell mechanic. Shame the card is unplayable with such low power. Mild hope as a tribal card, a foretell card, or a combo card where you really need a 0 mana play with this CMC or some other characteristic this card has that no other 0 mana card does.

Cosima, God of the Voyage / The Omenkeel 7.5

Where to start?! Here we have two distinct cards, both powerful. Both cheap. Both offering the potential for tempo and value. I really can't see this one not being a good cube card given this card seems to not just tick the two main boxes a card needs to tick but by doing so twice. It just so much magic card. The Omenkeel is at least simpler so lets start there. It is not a million miles off a Smuggler's Copter for power. No flying is a big downgrade and being blue obviously makes it a lot narrower. The cost, size, and crew ratios are all the same and so the card is a reasonably dominant early game play. The trigger is arguably better than Copter if you connect and hit a land with it. Generally I want to be drawing a land over a loot in the early game. It isn't just value for you though, exiling cards from libraries in cube is scary. Your library is small, your threat count often low. A couple of hits from this could just be game over and that isn't just combo decks. It also empowers other vehicles to do the same but that is basically never going to be relevant. The Omenkeel will give fits to decks that cannot easily outclass it on the board or remove it easy. It will also generally be decent against planeswalkers and help to keep them on the back foot. I am not sure if Omenkeel would last in my cube as a stand alone but if it didn't it would be the fault of blue lacking many good cheap dorks to crew it with or more importantly, support an aggressive archetype. The worst thing about Omenkeel, other than low dork and thus crew count in blue, is simply that Cosima is on the other side and she is quite the temptress. Convoluted for sure but very potent. 

She essentially converts your landfall into stats and cards. X+1 lands for X cards and +X/+X to be precise. She comes down, has to survive to your next upkeep, perhaps gets a block in. Then you exile her and start to rack up counters. When you need the cards and body back she comes and you get a huge payoff. A three mana 5/7 that draws three cards sounds foolishly good. Having to wait a turn with a do nothing 2/4 in play with your pants down, and then play four lands before you had anything to show for your card, three mana, and crap turn, however makes that 5/7 Ancestral God sound rather worse. Sure, you can just pop a sac land and immediately have a 3/5 and card. That is fine but still quite slow. She has summoning sickness again. You also have to do lots of gambling. You might need cards but not have lands to charge her up and bring her back. If you are just desperate for action and in topdeck mode you are going to need like six turns with this just to get one card back which is miserable. You might as well try and beat with a 2/4! Cosima is like Ancestral Visions on legs. You kind of have more control but not entirely. If you have time and can set it up Cosima is going to win games for you with ease. If not she is going to be supremely underwhelming. Luckily she has a fairly nice safe alternate boaty mode. Another issue with this card is that both halves don't ideally fit into the same sorts of deck. One is more on the aggro side and the other more control. This pushes the overall package much more towards being a midrange card as a result. I think it is a bit needy and hard to home presently to be a bomb but it is still plenty good enough. The power is there for sure, just ways to use it are not yet established properly and supported. I think this will get better with time, unlike most cards.

Niko Defies Destiny 0

Niko sucks and everything he touches he makes suck. This card isn't just a three mana do nothing. It takes it's time and does a new instance of nothing three times over three turns. I am not even sure I would play this in a foretell themed deck mainly in these colours. When you really get down to it this card is just a really bad and unreliable and narrow Revitalize. Laughable. 

Arni Slays the Troll 1

This is a lot of card but it is a gold fight card. It is also a sorcery speed two mana fight card which isn't even good by the standards of fight cards. When this works out you get quite a lot of return but it isn't worth the risks. There are some unique things about this card so that combined with the power level earn it a 1/10 but I really can't see playing this anywhere ever. 

Crippling Fear 6.5

Very reasonable tribal wrath effect. You don't even have to play it in a tribal deck. You will always be able to keep a small dork alive with this and clear out all the opponents, sometimes you will keep a few alive. The issue is the bigger dorks. When your four mana sorcery speed Wrath isn't saving you against some medium sized stuff it is a bit awkward. This is much more playable in a cube type of setting where most decks have dorks and board presence of which a lot is token chaff and smaller utility dorks. I will be testing this one for sure, it has a decent shot. I was very unimpressed with Yahenni's Expertise but hopefully this should be tempo and card advantage rather more reliably thanks to not needing relevant plays in hand. This is like a midrange players Wrath which is a welcome tool for cube.

 

Fynn, the Fangbearer 2

This seems like an incredibly dangerous commander. Bow of Nylea stock also just went up rather. There are already 6 dorks in green with death touch for just one mana. Fynn is going to get a lot of quick kills. Super narrow but a lot of potential. The new enchantment just spoiled in the commander decks is a little scary with Fynn as well and gives him a tribal angle if he wants it. 

Glorious Protector 7.5

Restoration Angel that also protects against mass removal. The body alone is quite pleasant for the control players. The foretell option greatly increases the flexibility of the card too and lets you run it out turn three if needs be. The downsides of the new Resto Angel are that it is WW in the normal cost making it a little less splashable and that it holds the exiled dorks until death. This is fine if they instantly come back thanks to a mass removal spell that kills the Guardian but if it was just spot removal, or perhaps you are just trying to milk some EtB value then you are going to have to wait. All round pretty solid card. Not quite so many abusive swings in normal fair combat as Resto but much better suited to aggro decks combatting one of their most pressing concerns. If control decks wind up playing this anywhere near as much as aggro decks then I would be giving this an 8/10, as it is I expect them to only occasionally play this. 

Ascent of the Worthy 2

A pretty cheap Zombify but waiting three turns on your recursion takes a lot of the sting out it. Stages one and two are interesting. They give a kind of indestructibility shield to your dorks at the cost of one dork per turn. This could be really useful in loads of ways, all very narrow. The obvious one is just getting in big safe attacks. Then you have quirks like doing loads of damage to something like a Boros Reckoner or just having a kind of sac outlet for a dork. While this is a fair amount of card it is going to be tricky to find good decks to put it in and good situations to make the most of all parts of the card. Mostly it is just narrow, situational, slow and gold thus not getting near any drafting cube of mine anytime soon. 

Kaldheim Preliminary Review Part III

Finally the missing and now heavily out of sequence part three;

Arni Brokenbrow 2

Nice little beater but far too fair for cube. Just a couple of years too late to the party for this one. Berserker tribal is the only hope for Arni now. 

Battle for Bretagard 2

OK on its own giving four 1/1 tokens eventually. Sadly it is pretty slow and easily disrupted such that the return is rather less. On the flip side you can high roll this and create some pretty serious token advantage. Another Angel of Sanctions sounds nice, perhaps a wolf token and beast token and lets throw in a wurm token for good measure! Selesnya certainly has a lot of token production and does have a mix of some of the best ones out there. I would play this in decks with the right synergies but I am not into it for cube play. It is just too slow, gold, and narrow, with far too low of a floor. 

Blessing of Frost  0

Just too many things needing to be going on here for it to be exciting. Sure, if you can get four +1/+1 counters and draw three or so  cards with it then great. You need dorks and snow lands and things to line up nicely. Just play a proper pump spell or a more reliable or suitable card draw tool. 

Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider 7

This dude is a bit of a beast. Trample and haste on a 6/6 for six gets some work done. That applies pressure of batters planeswalkers right through a lot of defence. That alone puts him in sights of Thundermaw Hellkite levels of card, which these days is the low end of stuff in most cubes. As such does all that counter doubling and halving push it up to and past the Hellkite bar? It could give your opponent an infinite combo with a random persist or undying creature! It is tricky to say as it very much depends on what else is going on in both decks. If you have a lot of counter synergy then it is a bit better and the same goes for your opponent. A lot of cards use counters. The big one of course is planeswalkers and for cube I suspect that is enough to push Vorinclex into the realms of pretty good. It hits walkers both as they enter play and when they use abilities making all your walkers loyalty beasts and rapid threats with ultimates while the opponents are all tiny and struggling to grow or do much. Their +1 becom +0 and their 5 loyalty walker came down with 2 rendering the -3 ability unusable etc. Vorinclex can close a game out with beats fairly fast or he can sit back and let counter synergy cards win instead. He is vulnerable to removal but with haste and potentially even a small amount with the counter synergies he can get a lot done in one turns worth of action. I expect to like this less than Primeval Titan but more than Carnage Tyrant which should well result in a permanent, if loosely held, cube slot.

Toski, Bearer of Secrets 6.5

Very cute. The cynical view is that wizards is doing their level best to milk all they can from EDH players. I suspect this because I also want to build around this! Damn them. Power wise this card is reasonable to the point I could see it being run in cubes. You can get some immediate return with other attackers and it applies some pressure itself. Generally a pretty resilient card advantage tool as well in the same sort of camp as Guardian Project. The added perks of Toski is with any sort of buffs like good old equipment. This means that Toski is a bit of a threat regardless as it attacks with impunity and rarely suffers ill from doing so. I think this should out perform Guardian Project and earn a cube slot as a slow green value tool. It doesn't need much support to be decent and does a reasonable job of scaling up with plenty of things quite nicely. The combination of it being a value card that poses some threat beyond that and a value card that can have immediate returns and an effect on the board entice me. It is fairly convenient as to when you can play it unlike Guardian Project which really wants you to drop it down as soon as you can and in doing so hurt your tempo. Bounce and exile effects are the real issue for Toski but if you know that you can try and get one good turn of value rather than trying to keep him around. 

The Bloodsky Massacre 1

I really like this card but I can't justify putting it in the cube even to test. The ceiling is decent, you get a 2/3 menace and at least a card for no more than two mana. Toss in another berserker or two and you are looking at no mana for massive return. The issue is that, while not bad, the average performance of the card will not be enough to overcome this being gold. When this card is bad it is shocking so the average will be made up of times it is decent and times it is a total blowout. Just getting the token randomly bounced or otherwise easily removed and you got nothing much at all. Tribal card only and as yet we have precious little else promoting this tribe. 

Righteous Valkyrie 3

Not quite reliable enough yet to just run cards in cube that need high life. In decks built to gain life however this is a massive card. It offers quite decent lifegain itself triggering with most of the types found in life gain decks. It then becomes a super Anthem on a  3 mana flying 4/6 body as soon as you get a fairly easily met high life total. 

Battle Mammoth 6.5

This also looks like it is just good enough to edge out the weakest card from a slot. In this case I think this is going to practically be a touch better than Elder Gargaroth. While it lacks the same top end range as Gargaroth the Mammoth is much safer as a play what with being that much harder to trade evenly with it. The passive is not just protection for the Mammoth in cube, especially being on a 5 toughness body. There are loads of little effects found on utility creatures and planeswalkers that have narrow ranges or small effects all of which wouldn't kill Mammoth but do trigger the draw. Walking Balista is a poor thing to have against this, as is a Rishadan Port, Gideon's Lawkeeper isn't ideal, even just getting it killed by two burn spells is a juicy four for one and that is one of the less good outcomes possible. 

Mammoth also has a nice alternate casting mode with the foretell which can be used to break up a cost to deploy a turn sooner than normal curving at an extra mana cost overall, or perhaps just lets you actually get it out if you are somehow capped at four mana or don't want to risk being in that situation with nothing to do. Being easier to deploy  (than Gargaroth) thanks to foretell, and safer thanks to the passive the Mammoth does a reasonable job of being a proactive green fatty. You might well win the game with it but you don't need to. It is just good clean muscle to be getting on with. I feel it is like a green iteration of Cavalier of Gales. A kind of top end filler role, the kind of thing Thragtusk used to be. Just a big thing you are happy to lead with and have answered, you don't need to win with it and thus don't need to be precious about it. Foretell in general seems to be a nice upgrade to morph focusing more on splitting costs up. Almost a suspend style of effect leaving you with more control. I like the mechanic and look forward to seeing what else we get with the ability. It is noteworthy that you can protect key cards from hand disruption with foretell which could be a very small nerf to a few cards and arguably black in general.   

Dragonkin Berserker 6

The card to compare this with is Dragon Whisperer as both are small dorks with threatening mana investments. Berserker instantly jumps ahead on three points. Easier to cast. Better baseline thanks to first strike. Easier to activate both on cost and prerequisite. Whisperer can do more by itself but this is at odds with the dragon token generation. Generally you want to invest your mana in making another threat that sticks around rather than making an existing threat into that kind of thing for one turn at the same kinds of cost. You are just asking for trouble when you spend a turn pumping Whisperer and hitting in the air. Whoops Shock good games. Much as I rate the Berserker quite a bit above the Whisperer, which is a decent enough card, I still don't really expect this to perform all that well in cube. Red is OK for value and can do a lot more scary things with five mana than token dragons. Mostly I don't rate this card as I think that you will have to chump attack any time you have spare mana for token dragons. Seven mana total for a 5/5 token isn't good. A 2/2 that just sits there isn't great either. This does early game and late game things and while it does both quite well it doesn't do either above the bar for cube and so I think this will underperform and get cut despite looking like it should easily land a cube slot.

Runeforge Champion 1 

Seems powerful but obviously entirely hinges on how playable and common runes are. Tempo, two for one, recursion/tutoring and cost reductions. There is a lot of good stuff going on here. With few Runes on offer and fairly tame power levels on them I don't expect to see much of this for now. If we revisit the card type of runes then we can have another look at this. It is unfortunate that the white rune seems to be one of the least interesting. 

Resplendent Marshall 6

A powerful stand alone tribal support card. Base line this is a 3/3 flier for three which is a fine enough place to be. Then you throw onto that the potential for this to cast a couple of Basri's Solidarity and you have a very potent card indeed. With just the first trigger hitting good you have a card that is already a good chunk better than Benalish Marshall. It fliers, is easier to cast and the buff isn't lost when it dies, indeed, it may get bigger! There are absolutely some perks of Anthem effects over +1/+1 counters but when it comes to having them on creatures I prefer the one that sticks around. Sadly this Marshall has two big things holding it back. Firstly you need to have a fairly tribal deck where by a good 80% of your dorks share types. This is fairly easy to do in my cube with so many aggressive white dorks being humans and those that are not frequently having a profession type that you can match to a human like warrior or knight. It is still effort though and reduces the playability, perhaps more so than a WWW casting cost. Then we have the need of a dork in the bin to exile and this is a real pain. White doesn't do this easily and when it does it just means something got killed and now the Marshall will be buffing less things. Curving out with this in a way that it near the ceiling will require dorks in play and in the bin which is a fairly big ask. For what is a fairly boring and linear aggressive card I think this is just a touch too restrictive and conditional. The power is there for sure but I can't see it lasting in cube. 

Sigrid, God-Favoured 6

This is a reworked Banisher Priest. It has flash and first strike and even protection from gods, all of which add a lot to the card. The only drawback is that it has to hit attackers or blockers which is a big old drawback and easily worse than any of the perks are good on their own. Sigrid is also best on defence where you get to take out one attacker with the EtB and then another with first strike damage. The issue with that is you want this kind of card more in an aggressive deck. You lose all the value of the flash as well as damage that you could be forcing through when you use this during your attack. I do like this card and want it to perform but I can't really see it being better than a boring old Fairgrounds Warden. I will be giving this every opportunity to prove itself as it is interesting and seemingly very close on power level. Perhaps more midrange and control decks would be up for a card like this than I am crediting it with. This is why it is always good to give the marginal cards a chance. It is nice when they surprise you, especially the ones you like. 

Calamity Bearer 3

Take lame limp tribes and jam a few obscenely powerful cards with heavy tribal needs into the mix and see if you can elevate them seems to be the motto for Kaldheim tribal (other than elves of course who need no elevating). We are still a long way off giant tribal being strong in cube but Calamity Bearer goes a fair way to making it a thing. You can kill something and win on turn five with just this and a Bonecrusher Giant. That is pretty impressive for so few cards. Bearer isn't even a complete do nothing by himself, an effective 6/4 that scales well to buffs is quite a threat and fairly big by cube standards. While you wouldn't play this without other giants it wouldn't be bad when you happen to have no others about. 

Rise of the Dread Marn 3

Interesting but a little fiddly and situational for my liking. Odds on it will be pretty clear when the foretell is being used. That doesn't ruin it by any means but it adds to the issues. You need 3 tokens for this to be good, 2 is fine but hardly exciting, one or less is straight up terrible. Really for this to be good you want it to prevent the use of a Wrath effect which will be game winning but will also be against few archetypes and will cost you cards and mana to do so. Better off with cards that always do their thing like a Dread Wanderer for handling questions such as Wrath of God. I'll test this as it is quite cool but I'm sure this isn't worth a slot. Green needs this way more than black and neither Caller of the Claw or indeed Liliana's Standard Bearer have impressed in cube leaving this with low chances. 

Kaldheim Preliminary Review Part XIII

 

Narfi, Betrayer King 3

This is a pretty efficient recursive dork. Three mana for a 4/3 lord is cheap. You are not even colour tied so a mono red deck with enough mill and discard could play this. Much as Narfi is high powered and does a lot of things it is still a card that needs support and ideally a couple of forms. You want the lord to be relevant and you want the recursion to be relevant too. This means snow or zombie heavy decks with discard effects. If you just make a 5 mana 4/3 and hope to win by remaking it at 3 mana a go later down the line you are in for swift defeats. As such Narfi is too narrow for cube and will remain a constructed card even if he is one with a couple of potential homes. 

Aegar, the Freezing Flame 3

This is pretty easy to trigger being a giant, red having loads of burn, and Izzet having loads of wizards. Despite this I can't see it making cubes. Gold cards need to be above and beyond and this isn't. It is easily disrupted and situational. This is powerful but it isn't really powerful and it isn't that playable. Feels like a tribal card mostly. 

Firja's Retribution 2

Another saga in the series of very powerful overall effects that are too slow and reliant on the survival of a token creature to stand up on their own. This card is really impressive sometimes and laughed out of the room by a Mind Sculptor or Brazen Borrower. I might play this in tribal angels, I wouldn't risk it elsewhere. 

Stalwart Valkyrie 1

Much as I am well into a 3/2 flier for 1W in white this is rarely a two drop. At that point I might as well play Serra Avenger. The normal casting cost for this is a disaster and so I don't hold out much hope for this needy vanilla beater. 

Reidane, God of of the Worthy / Valkmira, Protector's Shield 8

Now this is quite the card. Thalia and Gaddock Teeg's deity offspring! Reidane is playable by herself which is a great start. The body is fine, it is relevant and hardy enough to justify the cost. The effects can be pretty brutal. The main one being that you buy two more turns before a Wrath is online. She is horrendous for planewalkers too. Theirs exclusively. Unlike Thalia Reidane doesn't interfere with your plays so you can happily flop out four mana walkers after her. Rude. Also finally a punisher for playing snow lands. Astrolabe was a free roll in a lot of cube decks due to how I allow snow lands, Reidane will give some pause for thought on such things. Reidane brings a nice amount of relevant disruption at just the right time and cost. She isn't broken but she is perfectly on theme and well suited to the task. She is going to give control decks fits and that is for the best. She is still fine against midrange and even aggro decks too. She gets involved in combat and will slow a bunch of their spells. 

The Shield is rather narrower in application but can be devastating. Against a burn deck or a weenie deck it is utterly gutting the damage potential. All burn spells cost one more and do one less. Nice two mana Shock your Lightning Bolt has become...It also ruins little things like Rishadan Port, little utility effects that target just become pretty inefficient to use over and over again. It slows down the game so much for your opponent. The thing is that Reidane is something you want to play in aggressive decks like Thalia. In those you are less interested in slowing down the opponent than you are about killing them. It is nice in that it randomly shuts off a lot of combo kills that white is otherwise vulnerable too. Brain Freeze gets a lot more costly. Infinite Deceiver Exarchs are no longer sealing the deal etc. Mostly I see the Shield as a card that aggro white decks will occasionally get to ruin aggro red and combo decks with. I don't think you can run this card in control on the merits of the Shield alone. It is too varied in what it does and too gentle as far as disruption goes for a clunky four mana investment. Control decks want dramatic recovery tools this high up the curve rather than a slow dampener that could wind up looking like an overpriced Sun Droplet. This is a great card overall but it is not one with loads of homes, luckily the main one it has is a top tier cube archetype. 

Draugr Thought-Thief 0

Fateseal or surveil is quite a lot of utility and disruption. I like the card a lot but without flash or being scaled down this is just not close to powerful enough to tangle in cube. 

Jarl of the Abandoned 1

Don't be tricked into thinking this is good thanks to the perks it has, the downsides ruin it. It is a removal spell you generally need to use another thing to turn on turning a two for one into a two for two. One with bad cost efficiency and low relevance. It isn't value or tempo, it is just awkward and slow. 

Runed Crown 1

Lovely, a build your own equipment. Neat flavourful little card. No good in draft and likely little use anywhere for now. Then 10 years down the line they will print some Rune of Eldrazi Conscription levels and suddenly there will be a new modern archetype! 

The gold utility land cycle 3ish

I didn't appreciate this would be a cycle when the first one was spoiled. I cannot be bothered to essentially say the same thing repeatedly so these are getting bulk reviewed. They are far too slow and narrow to be good cube inclusions. They do however do some significant and fairly powerful things ensuring they broadly have a chance of winding up in some suitable constructed decks. We are not use to seeing such significant effects on lands as these. A lot of the cards seem to do multiple things which gives them increased chances of ticking synergy support boxes. If the unspoiled Rakdos or Orzhov options are noteworthy I'll write about them. Utility lands have been one of the most notable power creep recipients over the last few years and the MDFCs from Zen Rising have really pushed the bar on that front. There were already dual lands with dork modes, that sac to draw or that cycle. The Castle cycle from Throne was exceptional too. These lands are not as powerful nor as playable as the new bar for such things but they are still strong cards that I expect to see getting a lot of constructed action from cube to EDH to competitive formats. Some of these might even creep into legacy with lands decks being a thing there. All slow but all fairly low cost of inclusion for a fairly high relevance late game perk. 

Ascendant Spirit 7

Looks like a white card to me although blue obviously needs it far more. Blue has done well for tempo cards in this set so it will be interesting to see if I can sensibly support a blue aggro archetype in cube yet. If so then this is a premium new addition. If not then this might just not have the homes to get any play. It is most akin to a Figure of Destiny. It curves a lot better and is arguably a better return on investment, although neither impress wildly on that front. It is all about scaling, options, and getting ahead of the tempo with these kinds of card. This is comfortably one of blues best one drop threats. They all need some mild support and so you can't easily play them all in a cohesive deck. Luckily this is one of the easiest to pair with any of the others. High powered card but one that might not last through no fault of it's own. Cards need homes to get play. Power helps forge homes certainly, as this will do, but depth is rather lacking in this area for blue, Spirit probably isn't the card that tips the archetype over the line. 

Usher of the Fallen 7.5

What a lovely little 2/1 for one. This is very fair but is still decently better than a Savannah Lions. It provides a bit of a mana sink, some nice options, and a means to develop the board without over extending all while being basically as good of a cheap threat as you can find in white. This isn't broken by any means. Paying 1W for a 1/1 token isn't good tempo or really impressive value either. It just has a solid floor with some meaningful upside options. 

In Search of Greatness 6

Well now isn't this a card!? There are two key things going on here that stop this from being a total bomb. The first is that it works from the CMC of other permanent cards so you can't just flop this down and make a free 3 drop the following turn. You need another thing as well. The second key thing to note is that you need exactsies on the CMC. It is not "or less" and thus giving free reign on free spells once you have something big down. It does make the card a fascinating build proposition like Birthing Pod. Trying to curve up with this and milk it for maximum mana returns seems really hard to pull off though. You have to be able to protect your curve the whole way up and pack a load of card quality and tutoring to help you have your curve to move up with. This is an Aether Vial kind of card but the counter adding aspect is either forced by using it or disrupted by opponent's remmoval. It can return absolutely filthy amounts of mana fairly cheaply but it is a little restrictive if you want it to work properly. The scry if you don't make a thing is actually pretty huge and makes this potentially cube worthy I think. The floor is Search for Azcanta floor and the ceiling is a better than a personal Mana Flare. The reason it is possibly cube worthy is that you really don't need it to cast things for you often for it to be great. Lets say your first play is this on turn two. Then you make some generic value three drop on the next turn after your pleasant "free" scry 1. On turn four if they didn't kill your three drop, perhaps it was an Eternal Witness getting back a sac land or a Blade Splicer or whatever. It is likely a chore to deal with it just to prevent the trigger but if they don't you can have an 8 mana turn on turn four. Not only is that more mana than a one drop ramp dork would provide in that time it comes in a big chunk allowing for a more substantial card to be deployed. A brace of a planeswalkers perhaps? A Thrun and an Armageddon? That is a massive swing and very plausible. Always having to choose the most expensive card is awkward and stops you just jamming a load of cards at two points on the curve into your deck. At least you tend to be winning when you have your big stuff in play so this is either doing work or you are not in need of it doing all that much. This is a really dangerous looking card despite the attempts to keep it fair. Fire of Reclamation and Wilderness Invention both wrecked havoc on standard, this is half the price. 

Skemfar Avenger 3

Miara, Thorn of the Glade suddenly looks very weak. Not quite enough support for this to cut it in most draft cubes but a solid little tribal card that protects on a metric elves want. 

Dwarven Reinforcements 2

Perhaps you play this in tribal, perhaps just cause all the dwarves are weak and you need to make up numbers rather than the conventional double scaling for cards that make two things of a tribe in tribal. Pretty sure this gets a 1/10 but I am blinded by my love of foretell.

Tundra Fumarole 4

This has some extreme tempo potential. When this effectively costs you 0 mana the card is a total bomb. At 1 mana it is very good. At two and three it is fine too so an OK floor. It is however quite hard to have this be 0 mana. You need to cast it with basics meaning you are mono or it is well past turn three. You then need to find a use for three colourless (snow) mana. That could be paying towards something great like a Glorybringer if you somehow also have another RR. It could just be playing colourless cards too like dropping down a Sword. I think this will not be broken often enough to make it worth playing over a card with a kinder floor. In the right place however this is a premium tempo removal card. 

Kaldheim Preliminary Review Part XII

 

Pilfering Hawk 1

Nice to have a body upgrade on a looter but the added mana cost ruins it for that kind of role. I might play this in a snow deck if I was light on playable low end or really wanted discard support. No chance of wanting this elsewhere. 

Smashing Success 2

Pillage at instant speed but four mana. Treasure rebate is lovely of course too. Sadly this is just a bit limited in what it deals with to be something you want in draft. It costs too much as well really but it will have places that want it here and there. I like the card and am glad it exists if nothing else!

Shepherd of the Cosmos 1

Just a bit pricy to be worth playing. This is mostly just a value card, it isn't much of a threat and doesn't have a huge impact on the game. For the same total cost you could flop a Sun Titan or a Sun's Champion instead and have a lot more power and threat at your disposal. There might be the odd situation this has a bunch of overlapping synergies and you play it but it looks like a very expensive support card. 

Jasper Sentinel 2

This is a Loam Dryad with reach and upgraded creature types. It works nicely with Magda or inspire creatures. Mostly however it is just a bad mana dork. There feels like there are enough one drop mana dorks in green, even in elves that you don't need this in a 40 card list ever. As such you need this to be providing tap your stuff synergy in a useful way to be something you would play. 

Squash 0

I don't think you can play this in tribal decks. Sure, with the discount the card is great but the problem is that giants cost a lot. You want to say alive by playing things before you get to giants not casting more powerful things if you get there. 

Karfell Harbinger 2

This is not much better than Vodalian Arcanist which I had some hope for but fell rather short. Blue decks after ramp just want to use artifacts for the task for a selection of reasons but mostly just having them not die to creature removal, from either player. If blue decks want blockers they play dorks that draw cards or at least dorks that are good dorks and block well. Coloured mana is a big upgrade but not one that steers this card in the right direction for cube play. I like it a lot. It is a potent support card but it just doesn't have a place in any cube meta I have seen as yet. 

Avalanche Caller 2

A surprisingly powerful little utility dork but a bit late game. It is just too pricey to use regularly in the early and mid game. Likely something you play to up your snow count in a snow deck but not powerful enough or broadly playable enough to breach many drafting cubes. Blue is at least looking more and more like it has viable support for more tempo decks, not that this is a shoe in for such archetypes, just another option or angle. 

Cyclone Summoner 6

This causes some pause for thought. Seven is expensive and but this is an outstanding stabilizer card which is exactly what blue craves in cube. Cyclonic Rift and Crush of Tentacles get a lot of action in cube and win a lot of games. Not because they are all that powerful but because they are really well suited to handling how a lot of cube games pan out. This is very comparable to Crush of Tentacles. It is more mana but it has other perks. The ability to keep giants and wizards in play is potentially more of a drawback than a perk and mostly wont be all that relevant. A 7/7 card is better than an 8/8 token. Not having to surge to get your body on the board is the main advantage and means that setup is vastly easier. The body is what makes these sorcery speed cards effective. Without surge Crush just resets the board but gives your opponent the first go at redeveloping. Having the big body down means you start out from the reset nicely ahead. Crush however is frequently played on turn four with a Chrome Mox or even just turn six with a random one mana cantrip or Talisman. Cube gets out of hand fast and the difference between a five mana effect to stabilize and a seven mana one is pretty vast. Yes, there are hoops to jump through for the reduction but it isn't really a competition if the alternative is being dead! I don't think there is a place in most cubes for both Crush and Cyclone Summoner. I suspect that Crush will just edge out this overall as neither are high powered cards and so the greater range of potential on Crush lets you engineer better overall performance. Still, well worth testing. A very close to the mark card. 

Battle of Frost and Fire 5

This is a lot of things in one card. Off the bat it is a Storm's Wrath which has been a most effective tool for red in cube and impressed a lot. Being gold and a mana more certainly takes a lot away from the card. Wraths really want to be as cheap and efficient as possible. Extra value is no use if the removal comes too late to save you. Assuming you can trigger the final stage once this is scry 3, a loot, and a card draw better than Storm's Wrath which is absolutely a lot more than one mana worth of stuff. Given that it is already on a card that draw is a free card not a replacement so to speak. It is basically Divination, a loot, and scry 3 which is looking pretty comfortably like four mana worth of stuff. This is a very potent card indeed and is very well positioned to support the needs of Izzet control and tempo builds. I suspect it is a little fluffy and narrow to get that much love but the power is absolutely there in spades. I don't love damage based mass removal that doesn't do equivalent damage to CMC but it does matter a bit less the higher up the curve you go, then it is other problems you face for your card...

Goldvein Pick 1

I want this to be good as I love treasure, but this just isn't The cost is too high and the payoff to fair and unreliable. If it was just combat damage to get the treasure then perhaps. If it only cost one to play then for sure. There is a small chance I play this in a deck that wants both treasure and equipment as a nice little support tool.

The Bears of Littjara 1

Powerful but slow and easily disrupted. Yes, a 3 mana 4/4 that deals 4 to a walker or a dork is nuts. Having to wait 2 turns on the damage and needing a token to stay alive until then however takes a lot away from this. Yes, you might have other 4+ power dorks, you might even have other shapeshifters you can grow into 4 power dorks scaling up the second age. Ultimately this is just too unreliable for a gold card. Simic is not removal hungry enough to risk this. 

Mystic Reflection 1

Clearly far too narrow for anything other than a combo and likely a bad janky one. Fun and interesting card that is going to be real tricky to find a use for and trickier still to find one that isn't deeply weak. 

Clarion Spirit 4

This is like a mini Monastery Mentor, or perhaps a passive Precinct Captain as you are only making a token a turn at most. White is not great at casting multiple things a turn what with having limited ramp or draw effects but it does love cheap cards that churn out dorks. Much as I want this to be good I strongly suspect it just produces far too few tokens to impress. An Orzhov deck or a Azorius deck, even a Boros deck probably support it well enough to make it good but it is the mono white deck that most wants this, once you add in other colours the bar raises and the types of things you are looking for change as well. I'll give this a little test to make sure but I can't see it working out too well.