transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:14] What is up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Limited Resources, this episode number 850. My name is Marshall. I'm one of your Limited Resources, and joining me on the line all the way from Denver, Colorado, it's Luis Scott-Vargas. Luis, we've got rares, mythic rares, and a couple of bonus sheets to cover today.

Speaker 2:
[00:33] Oh, I'm excited. This, I went pretty hard during Early Access. I think I did like seven or eight drafts, something like that. And this set has been awesome so far. So we'll see.

Speaker 1:
[00:43] Love to hear that.

Speaker 2:
[00:44] We'll see where it ends up, but I've been enjoying it.

Speaker 1:
[00:47] Yeah, hopefully it ends up in a good place, but a good start always really helps. And of course, this is also the format for the Pro Tour coming up. It's coming up pretty fast. I'm going down to Vegas in just a little over a week, and I got to write an article that kind of gives you the draft overview. And then of course, Paul and I will be in the seat on Friday morning for that opening draft at the PT as well. So everything is happening around Secrets of Strixhaven, and we're going to finish off this bad boy with our set review, Rare and Mythic Rare. Like I mentioned at the top, we're going to go over every single Rare, Mythic Rare in the set, plus there are two bonus sheets as is custom for a lot of sets these days, and we're going to go over the relevant cards from those. They come up very infrequently, so we're not going to spend a ton of time on them unless they're really cards that you need to pay attention to. Then you will be prepared and you can go forth into your drafts and subsequent events and stuff like that with the knowledge of this set. Before we do, I wanted to say thank you to everybody who supports us over on Patreon. If you'd like to, you can check out patreon.com/limitedresources, and it means a lot to us. Thank you for your support there. We also want to say thank you to Ultimate Guard. They have the best stuff. If you check out their website ultimateguard.com, you can see their full line of products, but you can tell how well thought out their product line is from the micro level, all the way just from protecting literally individual cards with sleeves, that type of thing, and then all the way up to like your collection and everything in between too. Deck boxes, long boxes, binders, play mats, again, I mentioned sleeves, all that kind of stuff, so that when you are either carrying for or playing with your cards, they are protected and you can make sure that they maintain that value and that they look really nice for a lot of years to come. They use premium materials. You can really feel it when you get your hands on an Ultimate Guard product, that they were very picky about what they used to make the things out of, and of course, really well thought out designs, magnetic clasps, little grooves for your thumb to go in from either side, like little well thought out details like that, that make the products really nice to use, and they just kind of disappear. You know, you don't have to think about it. You're never fighting with your deck box, or your binder, or whatever. The cards just, they kind of want to be in there. You can check it out again at ultimateguard.com. If you want to buy something from them, you can get it from your favorite online retailer, or even check out your local game store. They probably have Ultimate Guard products in stock there as well. So thank you, Ultimate Guard. We do appreciate it. Luis, before we get into the actual cards, we will be giving each of them a grade after we're done talking about them.

Speaker 2:
[03:35] Yeah, we use an A-F grading scale with two sub grades. And today we're going to see a lot more A's. It's the Rare Mythic Review. So as always, rares and mythics show up in force with the good cards. So we've got Bombs, Game Winners, cards that are good in many situations, especially behind cards like Sally Pride or the Last Run, best cards in the set. B's are cards that actively pull you towards, in this case, their school, their two-color pair. Just cards that are the best commons, good to great uncommons, cards that are headliners for a set, and again, solid removal. Just anything that is, you're pretty happy to play. It's not a bomb, but you're very happy about. Cards like Genghis Frog or Shredder's Technique. C's are playable. These cards are mediocre, but they're acceptable. You're not unhappy when you have them, but you're not particularly thrilled about them. Some rares are C's, of course, but rares tend to cluster on the two ends of the spectrum. So we're talking cards like Retro Mutation or Ice Cream Kitty. D's are cards that you're unhappy to play. They're a little below the curve. Not to say they're unplayable, but if you have five or six of these in your deck, then you're probably, you weren't in the right colors or you did something wrong during the draft portion most of the time. We're talking cards like Zoo Escapees or Donatello's Technique. Just cards that are a little below the curve. And then F's are cards that are virtually unplayable. Just straight up, you would never put this card in your deck. Cards that cost a million mana, cards that reference types that aren't really present and limited, cards like Broadcast Takeover. And then our two sub-grades, we have Sideboard, which again, not many rares and mythics fall into this category, though with bonus sheets, that's not entirely true. Cards that you wouldn't main deck, but out of the board, they can be B or maybe even A level, whereas they're closer to D level in the main deck. Lastly, we've got our favorite category, Buildaround. Cards that don't do anything on their own, but if you support them well, yeah, they're awesome. They do the thing.

Speaker 1:
[05:19] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[05:19] So we're talking cards like Everything Pizza or Burning Vengeance is the classic one.

Speaker 1:
[05:25] Yeah, it's funny. Probably the two most fun categories are Buildaround and Fs, because this is the rare reviews where we get the most of those. So yeah, we're going to be giving each of the cards a grade, but of course, the important part is the discussion. We're going to deep dive basically every single card, and if you pay attention to what we say, we'll usually make predictions about where we think a card could go or not, or maybe place a little baby bet about, well, I'm going to try this one out, and I think I'm optimistic that it's going to be a real thing, or you're going to have to prove that one to me and beat me with it a few times before I jump on the ship. So that is what we're doing today. We're going to start off with blue. We rotate the first color that we start with just to make sure that we get kind of even coverage across. And our first card up, this is a very Scott-Vargasian card right here. This is Exhibition Tidecaller. It's blue for a 0-2 Jinn Wizard at Rare. And it's got Opus, whenever you cast the Innocent or Sorcery spell, target player mills three cards. So we've had various versions of this where with Landfall and other things. But this one mills three when you cast Innocent or Sorcery. But here's the thing. It has the super Opus side of things. If five or more mana was spent to cast that spell, that player mills ten cards instead. I mean, the head adds up pretty fast, right, Luis? I mean, think about Limited. You start with 40 cards. And yes, 40 people, not 41, not 42. You're starting with 40 and then you draw seven by turn three or down to 30 cards left. If you're getting up to turn five, you know, on average, you're going to be at something around 25 cards left in libraries by that point. It gets kind of interesting when you're milling for 10.

Speaker 2:
[07:16] Yeah, I think that this is one of the cards that we probably would have underrated a bit if I hadn't had a chance to play with it, because I don't think the card is a bomb or anything like that. But I do think the card is a legit finisher. And the reason is not, oh, it's a rare, you only get one. It's not like a hegenkrab where you can get three. It's because on turn six, if you just cast this, then cast a five mana spell and mill them for 10. There are some magicians where it doesn't need to do any more than that. At that point, you can put them from 21 to 11 cards in their deck, and then they're actually pretty threatened to mill out even just as the course of the game goes on, not to mention if this thing survives. Or if you have something like the rapturous moment, the six mana spell that then makes five mana, well, you can cast that and then cast another spell really easily, and then they're just dead.

Speaker 1:
[08:02] Yeah, and you are assuming that play pattern-wise, two big activations of this would kill them.

Speaker 2:
[08:08] Two big activations of all this kills them.

Speaker 1:
[08:10] Right, and one is like a good step in the way.

Speaker 2:
[08:12] One is pretty close.

Speaker 1:
[08:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[08:14] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[08:14] So are you gonna play pattern it where you are gonna try to play it plus that, like you're gonna hold it in your hand. I mean, remember, we're talking about a zero too. Like it doesn't have flying, it doesn't attack, it doesn't even block very well. So there isn't a huge incentive to just throw this thing on the battlefield and then try to set up for later. You are gonna try to say, I'm gonna play it and play my five mana spell in the same turn so that they don't have a chance to react.

Speaker 2:
[08:38] Yeah, and there's nothing they can do besides obviously countering this thing to stop you from getting that first trigger. Like, cause it just happens.

Speaker 1:
[08:47] It just happens and you have priority. You cast Establishment Tidecaller, goes on the stack if both players pass priority. It now goes on the battlefield after it resolves and now you have priority, meaning you can just throw a five mana whatever on the stack, even if it's a sorcery and your opponent, even if they're sitting there with five removal spells in hand for it, not interact with it until you put something else on the stack. Okay. So a finisher in a what? Control deck?

Speaker 2:
[09:15] Yeah. I think that you would play this typically in a big blue-red spells deck. You could play it in Quandrix as well. I think Prismari is likely going to be the best place for it.

Speaker 1:
[09:26] Yeah. The only knock on that is that Prismari did seem like it was leaning towards that more aggressive version, right? Like less sitting around or what would you take on that?

Speaker 2:
[09:36] Well, I think one of the features you get out of being a big set with five schools is, I don't think there is just one necessarily of each of these decks. I think there is a blue-red aggressive Prismari deck, but I also know there's a blue-red controlling deck because I drafted it like five times. I actually just started forcing it. We're going to talk a lot once we get to the loot later in the gold section, because that card did some work for me.

Speaker 1:
[10:01] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[10:03] In this more controlling deck, then yeah, I think this is a pretty legit win condition. If you ever play like the big spell, Mirror, then yeah, this card just demolishes that.

Speaker 1:
[10:14] What do you want to give it? Because that's a very difficult thing to grade. There's some matchups where it's just going to be bad. If you're getting ran over, ripping your exhibition Tidecaller is not really the name of the game. It excels in certain matchups or certain situations that it could probably win you a game that you were going to lose or that you didn't really have a realistic way to win otherwise at the cost of just this one mana spell plus some setup cost. I don't know. You have experience with it. What do you think as far as grading?

Speaker 2:
[10:49] I don't think this is a high priority. I think it's probably in a deck that needs it and doesn't have a win condition, this is probably like a B. But I would say that early in the draft, I wouldn't take it as such. I think it's like a C-level card. You're either not going to be interested in it, which case it's basically an F or a D or whatever, or you do actually need it so it's closer to a C plus B minus. Think about it, you sit down with the Quandrix deck you like to draft or a controlling Prismari deck, and you're told, hey, your opponent's got one of these in their deck.

Speaker 1:
[11:20] Yeah, it's a game changer.

Speaker 2:
[11:21] I'm probably going to lose to that a lot of the time. Because you both just trade off spells and then if they can land the Rapturous Moment turn 7 of like, play this Rapturous Moment, play another spell, that's just a one shot.

Speaker 1:
[11:32] Oh, that's wild, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[11:34] And that I don't think is impossible to do. But even just the turn 6 or turn 7 or turn 8, whatever, something along those lines, play this, just immediately play a 5 or 6 mana spell, a kicked burst lightning, whatever it is. Mill you for 10. You better hope that your 2 to 3 good win conditions aren't among those 10 because you might be looking at, I have 9 cards left, am I going to win the game here? Sometimes the answer is yes because the biggest drawback to mill is that when you don't mill sufficiently, it does nothing or even worse, it fills their graveyard for stuff. But I have been on both sides of this card at this point, and I think it's a legit win condition. On the other hand, if you're silver quill aggro and you're told your opponent has one of these in their deck, you're like, okay, great, I hope they draw it. Right, totally. And it's not to say that you can't lose to this out of an aggro deck, but that's more of a they controlled the game and then they played this to finish me. But this didn't really do much to impact the outcome of that game. It is possible to race with this turn six, you play this, play a mill ten on their next turn, if they don't kill it, you probably kill them.

Speaker 1:
[12:38] It is a must kill.

Speaker 2:
[12:40] I think this card is probably like a B minus overall. I think you should probably take it around the CC plus level until you know you're this deck. The thing is, win conditions are not your priority when drafting a control deck. Especially this is a pure win condition, which will not help you stabilize in any way, really, besides being an O2 chump blocker. Whereas, you know, Lorehold, the dragon, right? Like five mana, five five flying haste. That's a win condition for a control deck, but also just like puts a lot on the board. So, it's a little safer to take those kind of cards. This is a pure win condition. It's a good one, but it's not going to help you win games where you're behind and you're getting attacked. So, overall, it's an interesting card. A gray doesn't really do it justice because this could be one of the better cards in your deck or an unplayable and it's really deck specific. But I think the Tidecaller is a real card. So, take that for what you will.

Speaker 1:
[13:28] Yeah, that's cool. It's the balance between being just a win condition, which is a negative thing, but the also uniqueness factor matters. This is a type of card that can hit your opponent at an angle that they may not have been prepared for. Really cool card. Next up is Harmonized Trio. This is blue for a 1-1 merfolk bard wizard at common. And it has tap and tap to untapped creatures you control to prepare Harmonized Trio. And its spell, you may have heard of it, it's brainstorm, literal, actual, just brainstorm. So it's blue, instant draw three cards and put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order.

Speaker 2:
[14:11] Yeah, I mean, it's better than draw a card to cast brainstorm, I think pretty clearly, though. In Limited, it actually is frequently very close because what ends up happening is you don't shuffle, so you just drew three, put two back, and then just open the next two turns, drew them. You effectively, it does let you play that third or second card down a turn or two earlier. So like, there is other things, but let's just say brainstorm's blue draw a card, even though we know it's a little better than that. This card would still be really good if it was just straight up tap two untap creatures. At some point, you can cast blue draw a card whenever you want, as long as this is still in play. At instant speed, the main drawback here is it does require a bunch of creatures, but if I saw this, I would just take this and probably try to draft Quandrix, because that's just gonna be a more creature-dense deck, I would imagine, than Minmoh's Prismarite decks. Or the Agro Prismarite card.

Speaker 1:
[14:56] This just becomes a card draw engine, then?

Speaker 2:
[14:59] Oh, if they don't kill this, they're gonna get just run over.

Speaker 1:
[15:01] Because you just do this every turn, right?

Speaker 2:
[15:03] Yeah, you can keep doing this. There's no point at what point would you have to stop doing it.

Speaker 1:
[15:09] Man, that to me is really awesome, right? It's a one-mana card that absolutely must be killed. One of the things that we talk about a lot on the show is a good way to fall behind and even sometimes lose a game of Limited is spend more mana on the removal spell than the thing that you're killing. Another way to lose a game of Limited is to do that, but have it be a two-for-one against you, where you kill the thing and then they get a card back in some fashion. This like meets all those requirements, right? Like, unless they just have a one-mana removal spell, the turn that you play it, that's the only way that they're getting out at even. They're still not ahead. They're going to feel like they're ahead, but they're even, right? If they use a two, three or four-mana removal spell, anytime they're behind, and if they use it after you've gotten to activate this once, they're also behind. So that is, man, that is a very threatening card for just one mana. I love Harmonize Trio.

Speaker 2:
[16:10] Yeah, this card's really sick. I would give it a B. Same.

Speaker 1:
[16:14] B plus. I mean, this is a lot of pressure. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[16:16] Yeah, B plus. I mean, it does.

Speaker 1:
[16:17] Set up cost is real. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[16:19] Yeah. And the biggest drawback to this card, I think, is probably drawing it when you just don't have enough creatures in play.

Speaker 1:
[16:28] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[16:29] And that will happen some of the time, but I mean, this is going to feel a little bit like, I mean, for those of you who've been cubing a bunch, what your opponent playing turn one Tamiyo, like when your opponent plays the turn one 03 Tamiyo, you are feeling it. You're like, oh man, okay, yeah, this is going to go kind of badly, like if I don't kill this. Exactly. This feels very similar to me.

Speaker 1:
[16:48] Yeah. And cube has the tools to kill a Tamiyo on turn one for one or even zero mana. Regular limited usually doesn't. So yeah, I love Harmonized Trio B, trending towards B plus for me. Next up is Mathemagics. This is XXBlueBlue for a sorcery. It's Mythic Rare. Oh wow. They really did math it up. Target player draws two to the X cards. And then they're very kind and they map it out for us. Two to the zero power equals one. Two to the one is two. Two to the two is four. Two to the three is eight. And then it does go up to 1632 and it says, and so on. But being realistic-

Speaker 2:
[17:26] I love a good and so on.

Speaker 1:
[17:27] And so on. So what are our realistic stopping points here? Two mana to draw a card at sorcery speed.

Speaker 2:
[17:34] So blue, blue, blue cycles, right? Four mana draws two cards. And then for six mana, you're drawing eight cards. So that's basically the way I see this is, it's a six mana, just take the turn off, draw a whole new hand of cards and hope you're not dead. Or it's like an eight to 10 mana way just to kill your opponent because it is target play.

Speaker 1:
[18:02] It is target play. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[18:04] If you pay eight mana, right? You're getting, they're drawing, I don't know, it's still only eight cards. You have to really spend 10 mana. If you spend 10 mana, they're drawing 16 cards. There we go.

Speaker 1:
[18:14] So it's 10 mana and then you have your exhibition tied collar out, so that triggers, and then...

Speaker 2:
[18:20] Well, I mean, for 11 mana, or 12 mana rather, they just die because they're drawing 32 cards. And if you have 12 lands in play, like they're obviously... So yeah, I think basically drawing four or eight cards is the two most common numbers. I guess you could cycle it if you were in a bad spot, but I would say that using this as a six mana draw four, sorcery speed, a sort of tidings for four mana, it's not great, but it's doable. Or eight mana, just take the whole turn off and then draw eight cards and just take the card. I'm gonna untap and do some real good things.

Speaker 1:
[18:57] I mean, it feels like a Quandrix ramp target, right? I mean, theoretically, if you had a stable board and this was one of your top end cards and you could dump the eight mana into it, like that's a game winning play. I don't love it though. I would assume putting eight mana into almost anything else would be also fairly game winning, but maybe actually affect the board.

Speaker 2:
[19:22] Yeah. My guess is mathematics is not very good. It's not a fantastic card draw spell or a fantastic finisher, so it looks to like a D to me. It does to me too. But it is cool and sealed maybe is a different story. Also, these things can be matchup dependent. It is possible you play against the mirror or some really slow matchup where having this card is closer to, it's like a 10-mana win the game because 16 cards at 10 mana is probably going to do it.

Speaker 1:
[19:51] Yeah, for sure. I like that. I think it's an interesting one for sure. I will say there is one caveat here that I think it would be tempting to maybe justify this type of card, but I don't think that it's true in Modern Era Limited, which is, well, worst case, I'll just pay blue-blue and get my card back, right? That is a very bad case.

Speaker 2:
[20:13] Yeah, that's not a... I mean, we know what those cases look like, and it's you losing the game.

Speaker 1:
[20:20] And as you lose the game, especially, even if it's just colorless mana, that's the case, but this is blue-blue, like you need two specific colors. And don't fall for that trap of thinking, oh, well, I could just do this, and then if not, I'll just bail on it and everything will be fine. It won't be. Like that is a huge setback for you. So yeah, I'm with you in the D-plus range or something for Mathmagic, but it has potential. There will be decks where it jumps up, probably to like a B or something. I mean, there are some cool matchups and scenarios where you can make it really sing. Next is, are we saying Yodzi? Jadzi? Yodzi? Yodzi, Steward of Fate? I don't know. Two and a blue for a 2-4 legendary human wizard at rare. I'm gonna go with Yodzi. Yodzi enters prepared, and when Yodzi enters, draw two cards, then discard, also two cards. So some filtering there. But the spell is Oracle's Gift, which is blue, X, X for a sorcery. Create X, zero, zero, green, and blue Fractal Creature tokens, then put X plus one plus one counters on each fractal you control. By the way, that's each fractal you control, even if you have extras. So what are my stopping points on this one now? One mana, I get a one, one, one, one, one.

Speaker 2:
[21:37] For three mana, you get a one, one. Well, and you get all your other fractals. My other fractals, okay. Really, for five mana, you get two, two, twos, which I think is pretty good.

Speaker 1:
[21:47] That is pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[21:48] And seven mana, you get three, three, threes, and then you're really talking about that.

Speaker 1:
[21:52] And that's kind of the business. And then you're playing a three mana, two, four, that already enters prepared and does some pretty serious filtering. Draw two, discard two is like that's seen a lot of cards and sculpting a hand. I mean, this is the type of card that if you have it in your deck, you always want to make sure that you're very cognizant of what lands you're playing or what small spells you're getting out of your hand that maybe don't do anything and saving them in case you draw your Yahtzee and then you can filter them away. I mean, this is a classic card that doesn't really ask anything of you, right? I mean, it's a three mana, two, four with upside, and more upside.

Speaker 2:
[22:32] I mean, three mana, two, four, draw two, discard two is just a card you would always put in your deck. For sure. That's a C plus, you know?

Speaker 1:
[22:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[22:40] That's like a B level card. This, however, probably like a B plus.

Speaker 1:
[22:44] I think so.

Speaker 2:
[22:45] Because you cast it, and then they have to spend some time killing your looter, or you're just gonna run them over with, you know, you're gonna pay nine mana and then make four four fours.

Speaker 1:
[22:55] Totally. I mean, this seems like a C plus mated with like a C minus or something, but that's a B plus. I mean, those are two, you get both. Like, this isn't the versatility argument where you're like, well, it's two mediocre cards or whatever, or two okay cards, but I can pick which one I want. You just get both. I mean, that's just, that's amazing. Yeah, I like B plus for Friadzi Stewart of fate, and we'll figure out how to actually pronounce that. On Thursday, I will figure that out because I have my meeting with Watsi about the Pro Tour. Next up is mana sculpt. This is one blue blue for an incident rare. It says counter target spell. If you control a wizard, add an amount of colorless mana equal to the amount of mana spent to cast that spell at the beginning of your next main phase. Oh.

Speaker 2:
[23:42] So it's mana, it's cancel, but if you have a wizard, it's mana drain.

Speaker 1:
[23:46] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[23:47] Which I think is pretty cool. I don't think cancel's amazing in this format, but it's certainly not unplayable. To just give a very brief, because I don't want to put too much weight on early access. I think I did that in Lornwin Eclipsed, and I want to pull back a little. But I did play more games this time, and dropped more different decks. The Converge deck is very real. Blue-Red Big Spells is very real. Blue-Green Ramp is very real. All three of those matchups cancel is pretty good against. When your Converge opponent spends the first four turns of the games getting their mana base, then starts hitting you with mind twists for five, and draw five, gain fives and stuff, all these big sorceries, like, yeah, I would always have a cancel on my deck against that matchup. I don't think cancel is going to be very good against Silver Cull at all. And I think it's going to be mediocre against Lorehold and Wither Bloom, which I think tend to be a little more mid-range-y, though. All three of those colleges can dial up the aggression, I think. Silver Cull starts the highest, but all three of them can be aggressive. So can Prismari. Quantrix could have a curve. I'm not saying cancel is a great card in this format. I'm just saying there are more decks than in a normal format. The percentage of times you want cancel in your deck are higher. Now, if this was always mana drain for three mana, we'd be giving this an A.

Speaker 1:
[24:56] Right.

Speaker 2:
[24:57] If you land this on turn three or four in the world where it always works, and then you just get to play a seven drop on your turn, a four drop plus a three drop or whatever. Incredible card. How often do you have a wizard in play and get to cast this and have the mana matter? Because on turn 10, the mana matter doesn't usually matter that much unless you're getting math and magics going or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[25:18] Right, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[25:21] I think looking at mana sculpt, my inclination is to give it about a C plus and say that you want three or four wizards to have the dream alive. If with zero wizards, it's like a cancel, which is about a D generally. It can be like a B level sideboard card.

Speaker 1:
[25:36] I did a quick search and it came up with 22 wizards in the set. That's across all rarities. I didn't vet the thing in case there's something weird in there, but that's a ballpark.

Speaker 2:
[25:47] There's a decent amount.

Speaker 1:
[25:48] Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, you know, the cancel is like slightly below the bar, but when the upside is absurd like this could be, if you have a few wizards in your deck, then it definitely becomes an include. Cause those times when you combine stopping, it's so good. This is the shorthand version of all this. It's so good when you have it set up that you will counter almost anything your opponent casts. You're just like, counter that, because you get to do this one, two punch of stopping their play for the turn and then overwhelming them on your turn. That's a cool card and neat design too. Little bit of a call back there. Next is Pensieve Professor. This is one blue blue for a zero two human wizard at rare. It has increment. I'll just read the reminder text on this since it's new. Whenever you cast a spell, if the amount of mana you spend is greater than this creature's power or toughness, put a plus one plus one counter on this creature. This is well set up for that with a zero power. It says whenever one or more plus one plus one counters are put on this creature, draw a card.

Speaker 2:
[26:54] Yeah, I mean, this is pretty much exactly what you want, right? You get to grow this, draw cards, find you more spells, which grow it. And the first one just costs one mana.

Speaker 1:
[27:04] Seriously, any spell?

Speaker 2:
[27:07] It is just, yeah, it is not difficult to get a card back out of this.

Speaker 1:
[27:12] I mean, it's hard not to, right? Like it's just any spell, right?

Speaker 2:
[27:16] There's not that many one drops. So what you're probably going to want to, you're often going to have to wait till about turn five, cast a two drop, just because how many one drops are in your deck. But yes, any spell that you cast that after this card is going to draw you a card, at least the first one.

Speaker 1:
[27:30] Right. So, so, and realistically, the first two spells you cast will probably trigger it, right?

Speaker 2:
[27:36] I would imagine so.

Speaker 1:
[27:36] I mean, you only have a couple of one drops in the average deck anyway. So it's just like any two drop and another, any two drop, you're getting two cards back out of it. It's anything. It's just any spell. So it's like, yeah. So that seems awesome to me. There is the downside of being somewhat mana intensive and just a zero two. So if you do spend your one blue blue and your opponent untaps and kills it, you know, you may find yourself slightly behind in that transaction, but the upside is so worth it. I wouldn't worry about it.

Speaker 2:
[28:07] Yeah. I, I just asked, it just asked basically. The doubt two part isn't even real. It just becomes a two four and two turns. Exactly. So you're not even really getting a good card. Yeah. Really good card. I think pencil professor is probably like a B plus.

Speaker 1:
[28:20] B plus is what I was going to say too. Because I could easily see drawing three cards off of this in a, in a very mediocre use case, like not even pushing the boundaries of, well, if I do this and then this and then this and then it's like, just cast three spells, probably two of them are going to draw you cards and then you just need something that's three mana or more at some point. It's going to be most of the cards in your deck. So B plus for Pensive Professor. Next up is Skycoach Conductor. This is two and a blue for a two, three bird pilot at Rare. It's got Flash, Flying, Vigilance, and it enters prepared. So that's a pretty stacked little baby text box on the left side. It's starting at a B. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[29:04] Three mana, two, four, two, three Flash, Flying, Vigilance. That's a B.

Speaker 1:
[29:07] It is.

Speaker 2:
[29:08] We're still in a world where good creatures with good costs are still, this is still a strong card. So let's see what else we got.

Speaker 1:
[29:15] Yeah. It's all aboard. It's an instant for blue and it says exile target non-pilot creature you control, then return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control. So it's an instant speed, but admittedly on the board sometimes, I mean, this thing does have Flash, so you could just do all of it, but way to save or re-trigger an ETB creature.

Speaker 2:
[29:40] Yeah. I mean, this is a B plus. It's just a fantastic card. Like when it's in play, yes, it's going to be often the first thing killed. So it's not, you're not really getting the full, like, you know, this is not protecting your other creatures as much. It's a little bit like a giver of runes, where giver of runes nominally protects all your creatures, but it's also the first thing that dies. So, you know, it's not like a lock, right? And there's a reason Mother of Runes is a lot more feared. But, I mean, this is still, you got a ton of value. And because it has flash, often the first time they see this card is when it's saving something. When they cast a removal spell and you're like, all right, flash this in, cast all aboard. And like, that's just a beating. Imagine two blue, blue, two three mystic snake that counters a removal spell like an incredible card. So I'm a big fan of Skycoach Conductor.

Speaker 1:
[30:27] Yeah, same. B plus for Skycoach Conductor. And by the way, that is the kind of power level and type of design I really love to see in the rare reviews rather than the just brute force. How much power, toughness and broad, crazy stuff can we put on a card? That's a little less interesting to me. I mean, I want those cards in my deck too, but this is a cool, this is interesting to me and still very powerful. Next up is Emeritus of Ideation. This is a mythic rare. It's three blue, blue for a five, five human wizard. It's got flying, ward two and it enters prepared. And whenever this creature attacks, you may exile eight cards from your graveyard. If you do, this thing becomes prepared again. And...

Speaker 2:
[31:14] For whatever that's worth, which honestly is not that much because I don't think that you need a second ancestral if your five, five flying, ward two and your first ancestral are all just kind of cruising.

Speaker 1:
[31:23] It's funny because we use ancestral like a shorthand for any card that draws three, but this Emeritus of Ideation's special card is literally ancestral recall. It is blue target player draws three cards at instant speed. I mean, that is so awesome.

Speaker 2:
[31:41] I really cannot overstate how much I like that they put the real cards on this. It makes this so much cooler. And I'm looking forward to bringing in an ancestral recall next time I draft.

Speaker 1:
[31:55] So you can actually put it on the stack. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[31:58] Oh, yeah. I mean, it's I'm not doing it for any reason, but just it makes the game more smoothly and play out a little bit. Oh, that's why.

Speaker 1:
[32:05] Well, very thoughtful.

Speaker 2:
[32:06] Yeah, I'm willing to. And you know what? Maybe I'll use a collector's edition one just to be safe.

Speaker 1:
[32:14] So that you can stoop down with the peasants and not feel out of place.

Speaker 2:
[32:17] It's because the C cards are clearly not real like the same. So there's no risk of it getting shuffled into the deck. It's just because someone thinks it's in their deck. They can look and say, oh, no, this is a collector's edition Ancestral. The beta Ancestral doesn't go in my deck.

Speaker 1:
[32:29] Yeah, if it was the beta, I thought I would just shuffle it right back in. I mean, this obviously does represent the other end of the spectrum from what I just talked about with Skycoach Conductor, where it is just brute force slap you in the face amazing. But this is a cool design. And if you're going to make an over the top mythic rare, this is sweet. I mean, my God, it literally says Ancestral Recall on it.

Speaker 2:
[32:54] Yeah, no, it's awesome. I mean, this is an A, like that's just what it is. Like sometimes you're going to want to wait to play this until you, if you have Triple Blue lined up and so you can get your Ancestral right away and then you're not, there's really no downside. But sometimes you're going to want to play this on turn five and it's even got Ward and it's pretty big. So there's a lot of the time it's just not gonna die.

Speaker 1:
[33:19] Yeah, you know, I, I, my guess that this is like with no context whatsoever. So take it for what you will. But my guess is that by the end of the format, if we ran like a deep study on whether you should play this on turn five or wait till turn six and then try to have Triple Blue and get your Ancestral going, my guess is that you're just better off playing it on five. If it has Ward 2, it's hard to kill. And it does have that thing where it is a 5-5 flyer, and you can draw all the cards you want, but you are going to just kill your opponent very quickly with this as a five mana 5-5 flyer that's difficult for them to kill. And that may be the more important side of the card on average than the Ancestral adding to it. The Ward 2 is just a complete game changer. It's five toughness with Ward 2. There's not that much stuff that just kills it.

Speaker 2:
[34:10] I mean, the thing that's nice is that if the beating them down plan doesn't work well, you probably drew three cards off this, so you could probably win the game in another fashion as well.

Speaker 1:
[34:18] Yeah, well, that's kind of pedestrian thinking, Luis, because I'm Exhibition Tidecaller, Mathemagics, Ancestral You. That's my, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[34:27] Look, all I'm saying is that there's going to be a lot of games that go down to both players are throwing their whole deck at the opponent. And I had a game with a Converge deck where I drew a bunch of cards, they drew a bunch of cards, we both played removal and it really did come down to like, okay, I have like three things left in my deck that can pull them.

Speaker 1:
[34:44] Oh man, I love games like that.

Speaker 2:
[34:47] And that's not gonna happen in all the matchups, of course, but it will happen in some of them.

Speaker 1:
[34:51] Well, this to me is an A plus. It's also, this is one of the sweetest designs I've seen in like, I don't know, 10 years or something. I mean, this is gonna be on that top top list of just the coolest cards that we've seen printed from them for us. I give it an A plus. I assume you do too?

Speaker 2:
[35:11] Yeah, we can give it an A plus. That works for me.

Speaker 1:
[35:13] Just a four for one, that includes a five-five flying ward, too. Or a three for one. Next up is Echo Casting Symposium. This is a four blue-blue for a sorcery. This one's a lesson. It has a little lesson marker, too. And it's mythic rare. It says, target player creates a token that's a copy of target creature you control. And then it says, it has paradigm. Then exile this spell. After you first resolve a spell with this name, you may cast a copy of it from exile without paying its mana cost at the beginning of each of your first main phases. So this is a cycle. There's one for each. And basically, it's six mana sorcery, copy a thing, and then you get to do that every single turn for the rest of the game.

Speaker 2:
[36:04] You can copy your stuff, which means that there is an escape hatch for your opponent, which is if you cast this, make a copy on their turn, like, all right, untap, kill both your things, go, and you have no creatures in play, this does miss.

Speaker 1:
[36:18] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[36:18] I mean, that's real. But like all the paradigm cards, there's a mythic, like you said, for each one, this will win you the game 100% if you don't die within the first couple turns. I mean, you're getting a new, a copy of your best creature every turn for zero mana. Like, yeah, that is pretty unbeatable. Like, you know, 100% is obviously exaggeration. There are, oh, I'm copying a 4-4, but you have a flyer in play and you're killing me, whatever. But I would say that the games where if you cast Echo Casting Symposium and you're alive three turns later, your win rate has to be north of 85% in those games.

Speaker 1:
[36:52] Exactly. And you know, the thing we talk about with Control Decks a lot is inevitability, and this gives you that very recently. Also, it is a little, it is templated kind of interestingly. So it targets a player rather than the thing. So you, they can't kill the thing and have this get countered. And then none of the Paradigm stuff happens. Is that kind of the idea? Meaning like, like I could cast this with no.

Speaker 2:
[37:19] So it's exactly that. It's because they don't want turn six Symposium. They're like, okay, bounce your creature in response. Now my Paradigm spell fizzles and I don't get it next turn. That's obviously just a disaster.

Speaker 1:
[37:30] So since they're not doing that. So I do need to target a creature, but since there's two targets, even if the creature were to die, I would still target me resolve and Paradigm would happen the next turn. Is that accurate?

Speaker 2:
[37:41] That's exactly how.

Speaker 1:
[37:41] How good is this card?

Speaker 2:
[37:44] I think it's pretty good. I mean, this is another like pretty, pretty good long game win condition, which obviously the more of those that we see, the less they all become worth, because you end up in a spot where it's like, if there's, and the next card is actually very similar. Like, yeah, I have a spiel about that one too. Of the what, 10 blue cards here, I would say that one, two, three, four of them are like expensive ways to win the game in a long game.

Speaker 1:
[38:16] That's interesting.

Speaker 2:
[38:16] And I'm not, and to be clear, I'm not counting the Emeritus or like Pensive Professor in that, because those are just great cards. Jodzi too. Not the end, two of the three, all three of those are Mana Syncs as well. But I'm talking cards like Exhibition Tidecaller, Mathemagics, Echo Casting Symposium, and then the one we haven't touched yet, Wisdom of the Ages. These are all cards that with a lot of mana will win you the game if the game goes long. The presence of all of them means you don't necessarily always need one. But what I like about Echo Casting Symposium, it costs six mana, puts a creature on the board right away. Even if that doesn't put you ahead or at parody, next turn getting a free creature and then getting to spend all your mana on something, I would imagine you've stabilized at that point and then you start to win. So I would probably give this like a B plus. I don't know, it might be a minus. Like if your opponent casts this on turn six, you're just like, oh, there's some games you just know you're going to lose, right? It's very much like, I don't know, your opponent resolving a planeswalker in some games where it's like, oh, they resolved the Teferi Hero of Dominaria on turn five and I don't have an answer to it. Yeah, I guess I lose. This is going to feel pretty similar. Obviously, it can be a little slow, but six man is not even that outrageous to consider, right? Like seven or eight man is when we start thinking like, okay, you got to ramp into this. Any deck can play a six man, a card, even if sometimes they have to wait till turn seven or eight. And I would just give this an A, honestly. I've just thought about it. Like there are ways to beat this. You can go faster than it. You can maybe, if you have an instant speed removal or bounce, you can like stop it for a turn where like they untap and they're like trying to clone their four four and like, okay, kill it now. I've killed both the four four and the future four four. So like, it's like, you know, each removal spell does kind of blanket for a turn, but it will just keep coming back. And if you don't kill your opponent, like especially if imagine they, they land a decent creature or a creature with like a, like even just like the stupid frost links, right? The comment, like they go like, that's the perfect guard. They play frost links, tap down your big attacker. On their next turn, they get another frost links. Like, yeah, you're probably not winning via combat against that, right?

Speaker 1:
[40:16] There's very few creatures that would matter that little. I guess fractals are the thing that kind of suck with this or something, but like any-

Speaker 2:
[40:25] Yeah, don't copy fractals.

Speaker 1:
[40:26] Right. Any casted, any creature that you cast is going to be great. Yeah, I was going to say A minus for it because it does require a bit of setup costs and it's a little bit expensive, but I think we're splitting hairs between A and A minus. This, this gives you late game inevitability. It affects the board, the turn that you cast it ideally, and it doesn't cost seven or more mana. That checks all the boxes for just a game winner. Now this next card, what is this? Wisdom of Ages, four blue, blue, blue, so seven mana, sorcery at rare. Return all incident and sorcery cards from your graveyard to your hand. You have no maximum hand size for the rest of the game, and then you exile wisdom of the ages.

Speaker 2:
[41:07] All right, I just want your snap grade on this before I talk about it.

Speaker 1:
[41:10] I mean, like off the top of my head, I'd probably give it like a D.

Speaker 2:
[41:15] So, I think that this card is another very good win condition for a very heavy spell deck, and I had this in three decks. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:
[41:28] You're running the experiment.

Speaker 2:
[41:33] If you draft, like, a Prismari or Jeskai, it was one of the decks, or a five-color Converge deck, like blue-green base Converge, with just 15-plus spells in your deck, you know, one of my decks had 18 spells in it. When I cast Wizard of Ages, I drew, like, 10 cards and then had no max hand size, and they were all, like, more than half of them were removal spells. If your plan is just kill your thing, kill your thing, kill your thing, draw two cards, kill your thing, draw two cards, then you cast this. Like, it does kind of, like, lock the game down. Look, that all being said, most decks don't want this card. It's a seven mana card that draws cards. It might as well say draw 50 cards, because sometimes when you spend seven mana and do nothing, you're just going to lose the game no matter how many cards you drew. But I do, again, think this is like a build around B. Like, the average deck should not play this card. The all-spell deck, this is just a totally legit card. Also, all my opponents conceded to it, because what happens is they untap, and then they look, and I have 14 cards in my hand, and like 10 of them are removal spells. They're like, okay, I guess I don't need to continue playing.

Speaker 1:
[42:36] Right, and that makes sense.

Speaker 2:
[42:38] You will enjoy casting this card, and I think it legit, there are some decks that having this card in their deck makes the deck much better. It's not every deck.

Speaker 1:
[42:45] I believe everything you just said. Yeah, I mean, I love the card. It's just, I'm thinking it has to go in the right deck. You have to have a whole bunch of instances, sorceries. You have to be fully down that path. It is seven mana that's hard to cast and nothing happens the turn you do it. So if you find yourself in a close game, it can be a big liability. It's terrible in your opening hand, all the normal stuff. But yeah, build around. Build around, I'm in. Yeah, it looks like an absolute win con for that archetype. So build around BB+, throw it in a random deck, it's an F, something like that.

Speaker 2:
[43:19] Basically, yeah, that's where I would put it.

Speaker 1:
[43:22] All right, blue, super interesting. Man, they really went deep on those cards, lots of cool stuff. Let's see if black can keep up. Black's first card is Post Mortem Professor. This is one and a black for a 2-2 zombie warlock at rare. It says, this creature can't block. I hate that. Whenever this creature attacks, each opponent loses a life and you gain a life. Gives me some of a back. And then I can pay one and a black and exile an instant or sorcery card from my graveyard to return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Not tapped because it can't block anyway.

Speaker 2:
[43:56] It can't block anyway, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:58] Yeah, that actually looks legit annoying. It is difficult to overpower.

Speaker 2:
[44:03] I would say more than annoying. This card looks incredible.

Speaker 1:
[44:06] Yeah, it looks fine. I mean, if they have a 3-3 or a 2-3.

Speaker 2:
[44:13] If they have a 3-3, you attack with this and you trigger your witherbloom life gain stuff, and then it just comes back at pretty low cost.

Speaker 1:
[44:18] At some point later on.

Speaker 2:
[44:20] Like the green-black uncommon, you know, the pest that has menace and comes back. I legit just think that card is, after playing against a couple of witherbloom decks, I think that card's closer to an A than a C, in terms of how well it enables what those decks do, not in every deck. And I think Postmortem Professor's gonna be somewhat similar. I don't think this is an A-level card, but I think this is like a B-plus. You're just gonna have, first of all, this just lets you cash in instance and sorceries for drain ones, even when they have a blocker. If they don't have a good blocker, like you cast this on turn two and your opponent doesn't have like an X3, or you can't kill their X3, like doesn't this card just house them?

Speaker 1:
[45:02] It really does. And also it's worth noting that they do need to cut out that block for this, for that time. And that means that anything else that you have, that might be bigger or hitting hard or whatever, is gonna be able to get in and they're gonna be really tempted to try to pick this thing off. Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2:
[45:19] It's also a magnet for combat tricks because they're gonna block it. They're always gonna throw, you play this and then attack with it, they're gonna block with their three three automatically pretty much. So it's like, all right, well, in that case, I guess I might as well.

Speaker 1:
[45:31] I'm starting to see why I never got my death touch giving instant. Remember, I was hoping for that with the pests and stuff, but yeah, B or B plus for postmortem professor, something like that. Next up is Scheming Silver Tongue. This is one in a black for a one, three vampire warlock. This is rare and it has flying and lifelink. So two mana, one, three flying lifelink. I like that. At the beginning of your second main phase, if you gained two or more life this turn, this creature becomes prepared. And of course, if it were able to attack, that's one life. And then so you just needed like a pest or the postmortem professor, anything to just get you one extra life there. And its spell is Sign in Blood. Black black for a sorcery, target player draws two cards and loses two life. That's a really nice pick for this. I love that.

Speaker 2:
[46:25] Yeah. And it's also pretty cool because you've gained some life. So you're pretty interested in like drawing cards and losing life. Also, it's pretty good win condition.

Speaker 1:
[46:33] It really is.

Speaker 2:
[46:34] Sometimes you just cast Sign in Blood on your opponent. And honestly, the Weatherbloom decks, two mana, one three flying lifelink would be like a B minus in those decks. Like not even joking. And this, of course, all told, I think this is another B plus. Agreed. It certainly gets better in Weatherbloom, but you play this in Silverquill, totally fine.

Speaker 1:
[46:53] B plus for scheming silver tongue. Next up is Grave Researcher. This is two and a black for a three, three troll warlock at rare. And it says at the beginning of your upkeep, surveil one. Then if there are three or more creature cards in your graveyard, this creature becomes prepared in its spell, reanimate, which is black for a sorcery. Put your creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. You lose life equal to its mana value. Nice.

Speaker 2:
[47:23] Yeah, I mean, this is awesome. I think that when I look at grave researcher, it's like how many, it's just like a lot of these cards. How many of the pieces would I take away from here?

Speaker 1:
[47:32] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:33] For, for, well, I'd still be somewhat interested. And like for this, like three men of three, three, the bigger upkeep surveil one is not a bad place to start. And this is kind of a must kill because it's not going to happen right away. This is not as good as like the two cards we just saw, for example. But if I, if I look at this card, I think, I think like in the middle of the late game, it's, they have to kill it in early. It's a three men of three, three with surveil one. And there's a decent amount of like self mill and stuff where you can't assume your opponent's grave researcher that they played early is just not going to work for another five turns. They could, I mean, end of turn, you know, play a thing that puts a card in my graveyard, untapped surveil one, and all of a sudden it's on, is pretty strong. And reanimate is a really strong card. It hits their graveyard too. If you had, if you didn't know that, cause you know, that is certainly a big part of the card.

Speaker 1:
[48:22] It is. Yeah. It's interesting. I think that play pattern wise, it does bring up an interesting question, which is you surveil and you see, let's say a castable creature. You know, my temptation would be to just still draw it and just be patient with my grave researcher. And if it dies, that it just, it is what it is. If they kill my grave researcher, but I would not want to like try to turbo reanimate as a baseline strategy and then like draw lands and then they just kill it anyway. Again, it takes a lot of setup to get this thing going, but I think if I'm on the other side of one of these and my opponent is just kind of patiently putting unwanted stuff into the graveyard, drawing their cards, letting their creatures die, killing stuff, whatever, blocking. I'm like, oh man, that thing is getting closer and closer to reanimate and I'm getting more and more uncomfortable. Yeah, I like how you framed it Luis with, well, what can I take away to still have this card be good? And I mean, there's a lot of stuff you could take away here. That means this card's very good. The question is, is it a B plus?

Speaker 2:
[49:26] Probably gonna be.

Speaker 1:
[49:27] Or is it just a B? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:29] I think it's a B. Like I do think it's good, but I think that like you're gonna, I just think that there's gonna be enough games where you don't have enough stuff in your graveyard and it's not living a turn that I'm not gonna pull it too much higher than that.

Speaker 1:
[49:42] Yeah, agreed. And also we have to remember the context of how good the cards are in this set in general. I mean, the commas and uncommons were already insane too. Next up is Moseo Vein's New Dean. This is two and a black for a two one legendary bird skeleton warlock at rare. It's got flying, so three mana, two one flyer. When Moseo enters, create a one one black and green pest creature token with whenever this token attacks, you gain a life. So it's a two one flyer plus a one one pest, and then it has infusion. At the beginning of your end step, if you gain life this turn, return up to one target creature card with mana value extra less from your graveyard to the battlefield where X is the amount of life you gained this turn. Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[50:29] So by itself, it returns, like if you attack with the one pest, one drop.

Speaker 1:
[50:35] Right.

Speaker 2:
[50:35] Obviously, if you can gain a couple more life, you can get something a little bit higher. But let's back up for a second and appreciate that we get three mana for a 2-1 flying plus a pest. It's just not us. There you go.

Speaker 1:
[50:46] It's already a B.

Speaker 2:
[50:47] Yeah. I mean.

Speaker 1:
[50:47] I like B plus again. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because it also maybe lends to a strategy of waiting around with a pile of pests and then attacking with like four of them to get back something kind of big from your graveyard, which is kind of an interesting wrinkle. But yeah, this card's great. I like B plus for Maceo Vane's new dean. Good?

Speaker 2:
[51:11] Yeah, I'll give it a B plus.

Speaker 1:
[51:12] Next up, a planeswalker. We don't see these as often as we once did. This is Raoul Zarek, guest lecturer. This is one black black for a three loyalty legendary planeswalker, Raoul, at Mythic Rare. And Raoul has four abilities, no static, but four abilities. Plus one loyalty to surveil two, okay? Minus one loyalty to have any number of target players each discard a card. Hmm, that's cool. Minus two, which does still keep Raoul on the battlefield, but barely. Return chart creature card with mana value three or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Very nice, can protect itself. And then Raoul does have an ultimate of minus seven, but remember the increments to get up to it are just plus one at a time, so it is going to take quite a while. But it says, flip five coins, target opponent skips their next X turns, where X is the number of coins that came up, heads. Is there a difference between taking X return and they skip their turn?

Speaker 2:
[52:19] In multiplayer, there sure is.

Speaker 1:
[52:20] Okay, so for us, not so much.

Speaker 2:
[52:23] No, it's effectively the same.

Speaker 1:
[52:24] Yeah, so this is cool. I mean, this is one thing that we kind of asked for for a long time, we got for a while, and it kind of power crept up again, which is a planeswalker that isn't the same pattern of just like sort of devest, like, you know, plus draw a card, minus protect myself, ultimate win the game. This is a little bit more in the middle ground for a three man, a planeswalker, while still maintaining that high level of power that you expect from a mythic rare and a planeswalker. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:
[52:54] Yeah, I think Raoul's pretty neat, like doesn't look like a bomb to me, but does some cool stuff. At least the biggest thing I look for when I look for planeswalkers is, okay, how do they do on an empty board? Like how do they do when they need to protect themselves? In this case, turn three, you're probably not getting that much out of it. Like you're not, I assume you don't have a creature to get back, for example. Maybe you do. And then surveilling and making players discard does not affect the board at all. And then the ultimate is real. So if you do plus it a bunch of times, like they're eventually gonna have to do something, but this honestly looks a little bit on the weak side.

Speaker 1:
[53:30] Yeah, for a planeswalker, it's not as devastating, but I like it. I mean, I also like that it's an interesting card for sure. It is interesting, right? And, you know, three mana, assuming you can get the double black in there and you plus one. I mean, if you go to drop into this, like they are already sweating a bit. They've got a four loyalty planeswalker and you have a two, two to protect it. You know, there's a decent chance that they're gonna have a hard time pressuring this thing. And you've already got to surveil two out of the deal. And then if you do find yourself in a board where it's protected or there's not much else going on, you could just start having them discard cards, which is, you know, that's also like, how many times are you just gonna say minus one, minus one, minus one, just discard, minus one, minus one, plus one, minus one, plus one, you know, that kind of pattern. Again, this is in a world where Raoul gets to just stick around on Fetter, but still like that, that's a useful game winning play pattern that this thing can put out. And I like that. I like all of that stuff. I'd still give a B plus to Raoul Zarek. I think that there's enough going on here. And Planeswalkers and Limited do tend to kind of warp the game and play out even better than they would in other contexts. So I give it a little bump for that too. What do you want to give Raoul?

Speaker 2:
[54:42] I would probably give Raoul like a C plus, maybe a B minus.

Speaker 1:
[54:46] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[54:47] I just think there's going to be a lot of games where it's just like, you can't really justify spending three mana on this.

Speaker 1:
[54:51] Really? Interesting. It just does so many different things. That's what I agree. Like any one thing isn't great, but.

Speaker 2:
[54:57] It's possible that the combination of the first three abilities plus of course, the threat of the ultimate makes this like, maybe just a B is fine. But I think that if I were presented with Rao and the first four cards we saw, I would take all of them over it except Grave Researcher, at which point it's close. But all these other cards are way better, I think.

Speaker 1:
[55:17] Yeah. So it could also just be that Rao is fine, but in the context of this set doesn't quite keep up. We'll see. I like B plus on it though. I think that's a lot of, I think when somebody plays, especially Rao on the play, you're going to be like, oh man, that's really annoying. Next up is Withering Curse. This is one black black first sorcery at Mythic Rare. All creatures get minus 2 minus 2 until end of turn, and then it says, infusion if you gain life this turn, destroy all creatures instead.

Speaker 2:
[55:47] Yeah, it's kind of interesting where the three mana, all creatures get minus 2 minus 2, two, two, two, three mana minus 2 minus 2.

Speaker 1:
[55:54] Julie likes Withering Curse.

Speaker 2:
[55:56] Oh yeah, she sure does. Is not a great card, but this obviously has the ability to just be straight up wrath if you attacked with a pest or anything like that. I think this is probably good, probably like a B.

Speaker 1:
[56:11] I think so too.

Speaker 2:
[56:12] My main problem with it is it's not wrath when you really, really need wrath.

Speaker 1:
[56:18] Right, yeah, you have to save some pest or something to be able to trigger it. And yeah, that does get difficult. That said, there is definitely a high power level on the card. I wonder how easy it is to read if somebody has this. I mean, it's a mythic rare. It's hard to put somebody on a mythic rare most of the time, but if they're very suspiciously saving the one pest token or whatever, you know, let's see. Wait a minute, why are you, oh, attack with it, then withering curse. And then you do get to that kind of upside. I mean, you wouldn't cut this from a black deck, generally, right?

Speaker 2:
[56:55] I would cut this from a black deck if I didn't think my black deck wanted a wrath or wasn't very good at making life or getting life. Like, like, Silver Cull's probably just not playing this very often, is my guess.

Speaker 1:
[57:05] Okay. Then that does lower it down a bit. I mean, what do you want to do? Like, is it a C plus, B minus, B?

Speaker 2:
[57:15] I would probably just give it a B, but just assume it's more of a Wither Bloom card. It's going to be quite a bit better both strategically and because it can enable the infusion a lot easier.

Speaker 1:
[57:25] Next up is Emeritus of Woe. This is yet another mythic rare. This is three in a black for a five, four vampire warlock. It enters prepared and it says at the beginning of your end step, if two or more creatures died this turn, this creature becomes prepared. So you start off prepared and then you can get re-prepared and it's spelled as demonic tutor. DT one and a black for a sorcery. Search your library for a card, put that card into your hand and then shuffle. It's so interesting to see these cards in this type of context, where normally you think of demonic tutor being card neutral, mana negative, and so you're paying this kind of premium to upgrade a card, to take the demonic tutor and turn it into something else, but at the cost of a fair bit of tempo. But this is just coming tacked on to an already massive creature of five, four for just four mana. And now it's card advantage. You cast your demonic tutor off of this, no cards left to your hand, and you're just getting a great card into your hand for the cost of two mana. That's a whole different ballgame.

Speaker 2:
[58:41] Yeah. I mean, I think that Emeritus, well, by the way, does not fly. The first time I saw this, I just thought it fly because it was a vampire, but obviously it does not all vampires fly, but it just looked like a flyer to me. Anyways, but I mean, this is a four mana five four that has a very strong spellbook spell or prepared spell, and can threaten to re-trigger it. I don't know how often that even needs to happen. I would generally be fine playing this on turn four. You can wait till turn six, but I don't think you'd necessarily need to. Obviously, if you know they have a removal spell or you really need to tutor for a specific thing, sure. But I think a lot of the value of this is just a four-mana five-four, and I wouldn't stress too much about A, trying to make sure you get demonic tutor, and B, trying to re-prepare it. Those things will happen and they will be good. But if you play too gingerly with this, I think you're losing a decent amount of value, too.

Speaker 1:
[59:31] Agree. Those stats are just huge. I'd give it an A minus. What do you want to give it?

Speaker 2:
[59:42] I'd give it an A minus. That actually sounds exactly right.

Speaker 1:
[59:46] Next up is Tragedy Feaster. This is too black black for a seven six demon with trample. The downside's coming, right? It's a rare. So four mana seven six trample.

Speaker 2:
[59:57] There is a downside, don't worry.

Speaker 1:
[59:59] It has Ward discard a card, still on the upside. And then it has Infusion at the beginning of your end step. Sacrifice a permanent unless you gain life this turn. This asks the classic question with cards like this of, can I just win the game before that punishes me too much? The times when I can't gain the life and I have to sack a land or some random creature or something like that. This thing is a three turn clock. It has trample as well. So realistically over four turns, it will win the game on its own almost regardless of blocking situation. It has six toughness. So it's really difficult to get in front of without death touch. It's also difficult to kill. But you could easily lose the game to Tragedy Feaster yourself if you can't apply enough pressure, you can start to see your board go away.

Speaker 2:
[61:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[61:04] You can sack it, right? You can just get the ejector seat on Tragedy Feaster.

Speaker 2:
[61:11] But obviously, those all do have costs. I had this once and chose not to play it, but it was a deck that couldn't really gain life very effectively. So if you can't gain life, I think this card loses a lot of its luster. Though I could imagine a silver-quill deck that's really low curve and really aggressive and is just like, I'm going to play this on turn four, immediately sack a land, untap, attack them and then play two more creatures or a creature in a combat trick. At that point, they just kind of falls in their court on how they have to deal with that.

Speaker 1:
[61:42] Totally. And anytime that you can infusion, you're just delaying that. You don't need to necessarily do it every turn that tragedy features on the battlefield. It's like one or two times probably gets it across the finish line. Yeah, I would start off strong on this card. The trample is a total game changer. If it doesn't have trample, you can just chump it until you run out of stuff. So that is the key to me. The War Discard of Cards, really nice too, just because it does punish them a bit if they do decide to target it. But man, I would start off with like, yeah, I wanna see this thing go in a witherbloom deck, and I bet that it pulls its weight. I am not gonna fall for the trap of overrating it and saying, oh, this is just a bomb and blah, blah, blah with such a steep drawback. But you know, I would draft this at like a B minus level for the deck, like meaning I'd like to play it. I'm moving in that direction. I'm gonna try to put some cards around it. Like seven, six trample for four is no joke. Like that is easily the biggest thing on the battlefield. It must be killed or dealt with, and it punishes them for doing so with the word discard a card. I like all of that. And I don't think that I need to gain life every single turn for the rest of the game to make this thing okay. I also like cards that I could just sort of, I just throw it in the red zone. It's like, you deal with this, you know, like if you don't, you lose. So you can put three creatures on it and lose those, or you can burn a removal spell and a card, and that's fine with me too. And every once in a while, it'll get locked up, or I won't be able to quite push it over the line and I'll take my medicine there. But like, it's a seven, six trample for four. Like that is no joke.

Speaker 2:
[63:29] I like it at B, and I think that, I just want to reemphasize a point you made that was good, is that it don't need always to be infusing. If you're infusing half the times, the drawback here is much lessen, so it's not an all or nothing thing. It's not, my deck's great at this or my deck's bad at this. It's, hey, my deck can sometimes do this, that's enough. Because there's just not that many turns where they can usually have this in play without having to do something about it.

Speaker 1:
[63:53] I really like the gameplay, too, of, they don't know that I'm gonna gain life, right? So like I attack with it, they're like, ah, but you haven't gained life, you're gonna start falling behind. Okay, fine, I'll take it. And then you do something in the second main phase to gain life, and they're like, no, you get to keep it for free for another turn. Next up is Decorum Dissertation. This is three black black for a sorcery lesson at Mythic Rare. It says, target player draws two cards and loses two life, and this is the paradigm card for black.

Speaker 2:
[64:25] This one's interesting because you don't have to cast it. So there's like kind of three modes on this. There's the level one, which is the most common one, which is you're drawing two extra cards, losing two life, and you're getting to the point where then you go to level two, which is you're not casting the spell, you're choosing not to cast it. And then you finally get to the final mode near the end of the game where you start casting it on them. And all of those are valid. Sometimes you're gonna cast it on yourself, sometimes you're not gonna cast it, and sometimes you do want to force them to draw cards and lose life, mostly for a life loss win, but could be a decking win, I don't know, that could happen. This card looks very strong to me. If you take a turn off to cast this, you're just never running out of cards again.

Speaker 1:
[65:07] Man, but it's five mana for Sign of Blood the first time.

Speaker 2:
[65:13] The first time, all of these cards are not a great deal. It's like the second time, for some of them, it's like the second time you're already ahead. For this, it's probably like the third time, which definitely makes it the weakest of the ones we've seen as we go through this. I think it might just be the weakest one in general.

Speaker 1:
[65:28] Yeah, I don't like it that much, actually. It's weird. I keep thinking about situations where I'm behind, where this card struggles actually a lot. And then also, I like the inevitability factor. That to me is the whole point, and this kind of gives you that. You can't just keep targeting yourself with it forever. You will die. So at some point, you either have to do nothing with it, which seems like a disaster to me with how much you have to put it up front to make paradigm, to get it going, or you have to start targeting your opponent.

Speaker 2:
[65:58] I just want to interject real quick, which is if you're doing nothing with it because you've already drawn six cards and you have enough to win the game, I don't think that's a disaster.

Speaker 1:
[66:07] I'm saying, what if you're at four life? What if you're at six life and you're like, well, I don't want to go to four or two? Like I'll die.

Speaker 2:
[66:15] Totally, there are places there where it really does not work out.

Speaker 1:
[66:20] I mean, the third time you target yourself, you've taken six off of the thing. If you were at ten, the first two times, you're already down to six, so you're like, okay, do I want to go to four? Maybe, but if the board's pretty built up or if your opponent could have burned, you may really be considering, do I want to go to four? If your opponent's sitting there at ten life themselves, you're like, well, I'm not going to start targeting you with this thing. I want this to be, I put in all this effort up front, I'm paying five mana for what was a two mana spell or three additional mana, whatever you want to describe it. I just want it to run away with the game. Even if it's incremental, I want it to be like each turn, I just get something, get something, get something, and then I eventually win. This one is in between, it makes me nervous.

Speaker 2:
[67:08] Yeah. How good is this card? It's tricky. I think that this card will have some moments that are pretty good, but I agree with you that this card is not unambiguously good, and there's going to be some games where it's really not going to do much at all.

Speaker 1:
[67:21] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:23] I mean, do you want to give this a D?

Speaker 1:
[67:24] I do. I don't want to give it a D. I kind of want people to beat me with this routinely. I don't know, maybe the life gain in Wither Bloom offsets it, and I'm not accounting for that or something, where you really can just draw six to eight cards and not have to worry about it that much. If that's the case, okay, you're going to find a way to win the game and you're not really going to care that it's not paradigming literally every turn or whatever. You're like, I've got so much material now and my life total was fine, but I don't know, it just makes me nervous. Maybe it just fits into each of the black decks that way. Maybe it's like Silver Quill, you actually just target them three times in a row and you're like, yeah, enjoy your cards while you have them, but you're just taking two every single turn for the rest of the game, and I don't care how many cards you have, you're not going to be able to beat me because I was quick at the beginning of the game, and maybe if you're Weatherboom, you just have enough life that you just target yourself with it a bunch and it doesn't matter. I could see both of those playing out.

Speaker 2:
[68:21] I mean, I think the flexibility is part of why this card's strong is that as a win condition, this card is very threatening.

Speaker 1:
[68:27] It is.

Speaker 2:
[68:28] And if you, I think Silver Quill, well, actually, I don't know, both Silver Quill and Weatherboom seem like they're pretty well poised to take advantage of this.

Speaker 1:
[68:36] They are, just in different ways, right?

Speaker 2:
[68:38] Silver Quill, because their life total is usually less in question because they're the aggressor. So casting a draw two, gain two, or draw two, lose two is a lot stronger when you're at 20 and they haven't attacked you.

Speaker 1:
[68:48] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[68:49] Conversely, near the end of the game, the Silver Quill deck's also more likely they have gotten their opponent down to eight life, at which point, just you sign and blood them to death. Whereas Weatherboom though, it's actually the opposite of both those, but it has the additional factor of they gain life. So if you're good at gaining two life a turn, then this card looks a lot better. I think this card's like a B.

Speaker 1:
[69:09] Okay, I'm with you. I was gonna say B as well.

Speaker 2:
[69:11] You have to, it is very, very powerful. Whether that all works out for you in your favor is not always gonna be the case.

Speaker 1:
[69:19] I like B for it as well. I do have it in that kind of prove it category where I wanna see it in these use cases specifically, but I'm gonna give it credit. I mean, it would be weird if they made a Mythic Rare with this cool thing, part of a cycle, and then it just kind of was medium. Like that would be very weird. So I like B for Decorum Dissertation. Last black card is Pox Plague. It costs five black mana, like literally black, black, black, black, black. It's a sorcery or rare. It says each player loses half their life, then discards half the cards in their hand, then sacrifices half the number of permanents they control of their choice, and then you round down each time. So mana cost is the first thing you effectively have to be mono-black to cast this in most scenarios. But then also, like, is this even good? Is this even a desirable effect?

Speaker 2:
[70:09] No, it's enough, just straight up. You don't even have to worry yourself about it.

Speaker 1:
[70:14] Let's move on to red, then. Our first red card is called Flashback. It is read for an instant at rare. It says target instant or sorcery card in your graveyard gains. Flashback until end of turn. The flashback cost is equal to its mana cost.

Speaker 2:
[70:30] I think this is a really elegant design. I have to give them props.

Speaker 1:
[70:35] It will look really nicely well designed in my sideboard, I agree.

Speaker 2:
[70:39] Oh, it's not a very powerful card. I think most of the time you shouldn't play it. It's like a D. I could see a super heavy spells deck utilize it just because, let's say you have tons of awesome spells that are good in different situations. Maybe having this as a little bit of flexibility and spell triggers could be good. But yeah, it's not a good card. But it's a one word name that does exactly what the name says. I think it's a cool card. So I like Flashback as a design. I don't think it's a very powerful one.

Speaker 1:
[71:04] Yeah, I'd give it a D or whatever, but A plus design. Nice job, Flashback. Next is Choreographed Sparks. This is red, red for an instant at rare. It says, this spell can't be copied. Okay, good start. Choose one or both. Copy target instant or sorcery spell you control. You can choose new targets for the copy or copy target or and or I should say, copy target creature spell you control. The copy gains haste and at the next end step sacrifice this token. Copies of creatures on the stack do become tokens when they enter. So you can't copy this fair enough, but you could do both, but you actually have to target, you have to cast a creature and then in response, cast an instant or have a flash creature or something. Is that all right?

Speaker 2:
[71:55] Which is not going to be very likely, and because both of them are you control, there's no free rolling off your opponent where they cast a creature in response, you cast an instant copy both. So yeah, this card looks terrible to me.

Speaker 1:
[72:06] Yeah, it does to me, too.

Speaker 2:
[72:08] It's just too expensive. So I would give choreographed sparks an F. I just am not interested.

Speaker 1:
[72:12] Emeritus of, I agree, Emeritus of Conflict is next. It's one and a red for a 2-2 human wizard at Mythic Rare, and it has first strike. So two mana 2-2, first strike. Whenever you cast your third spell each turn, this creature becomes prepared. Its spell is lightning bolt. Red instant does three damage to any target. So the question is, well, again, they've really pushed these, right? Because it is a 2 mana 2-2 first strike, which you probably include in your deck regardless. But how difficult is it to get the third spell? And remember, this is the term spell, meaning anything, any creatures, whatever.

Speaker 2:
[72:54] It's going to depend a lot on your deck, yes. Cheap flashback cards, cards that draw cards.

Speaker 1:
[73:00] Cycling stuff.

Speaker 2:
[73:02] Yeah, or cantrip type.

Speaker 1:
[73:03] Cantrip, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[73:05] I mean, you really just need this to work once, and it's incredible. How often is it going to work? I think it's not going to work that often, but one in a red for a 2-2 first strike is like a C+. Like, we're still talking a B-level card.

Speaker 1:
[73:18] A B, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[73:19] Your opponent, when you cast this card on like, let's say on turn like 5, you cast this plus a 3-drop and pass. If I'm looking at you with 4 cards in hand and you're like, are you going to triple spell me next turn? It's like, you could. Do I just let this thing happen?

Speaker 1:
[73:35] Right.

Speaker 2:
[73:37] So it's kind of interesting. I don't know what you're supposed to do.

Speaker 1:
[73:40] Yeah, and I mean, it really does need to be built around to get that. Normal decks almost never triple spell in a turn. That's very, very rare. Double spelling happens somewhat frequently, but triple spell is quite difficult. But if you build towards it, it is absolutely possible. I mean, look at flashback, the card we just saw, right? Like you cast flashback on a one drop in your graveyard, cast that, that's two of them for two mana. Any other spell, you're good to go, that type of thing. But that requires some build around. Really cool though, because this card would be completely obnoxious if they let you just fire off lightning bolts for like some marginal cost or whatever. So I'm kind of glad that they set the bar high. B for Ameris of Conflict, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[74:21] If you can get to the point where you have it prepared, but you don't need to cast the bolt right away, it does give you a really good leg up on re-preparing it.

Speaker 1:
[74:30] Does it count it? The bolt.

Speaker 2:
[74:32] Oh, dude, that's sweet. So you're on tap with a lightning bolt in the holster and you're just like, all right, bolt your thing, cast your thing, cast the thing, cast another bolt again. Like that could totally happen.

Speaker 1:
[74:41] Dude, I did not think of that. So it's like about getting the floodgates open. Anyway, B for Emeritus of Conflict. That's a great card. Next up is Molten Core Maestro. This is same cost one and a red for a two, two goblin bard at rare. It has menace and it says, it has opus whenever you cast an instant resourcery spell, put a plus one, plus one counter on this creature. Then if five or more mana was spent to cast that spell, add an amount of red equal to this creature's power. That's a nice design, because that second ability is kind of cute and maybe you could do some interesting things. But a two, two menace for two, that gets bigger for casting an instance of sorcery, seems to fit very well into that aggressive Prismari deck. Just a great two drop.

Speaker 2:
[75:25] Yeah, I would give the molten card maestro a B.

Speaker 1:
[75:27] I would too.

Speaker 2:
[75:27] Very threatening card.

Speaker 1:
[75:28] Really, really nice. Next up is Maelstrom Artisan. This is one red red for a three, two minotaur sorcerer at rare. It has haste and it enters prepared. So three mana, three, two haste that ETB is prepared. Its card is called Rocket Volley. It's one in a red for a sorcery. It says destroy target, non-basic land.

Speaker 2:
[75:51] Yeah, this is an interesting one as well. There are a decent amount of non-basic lands out. And if you cast this and blow up one of their lands on turn five, like you're gonna, I mean, it's triple red. They did make the cost, I think, a little difficult on purpose, but like, I would feel pretty put out by that. My opponent did that to me. It's like, oh, that's not good. So yeah, I...

Speaker 1:
[76:15] But you really have to be in the market for a three mana, three, two haste to make this thing, right?

Speaker 2:
[76:19] If you don't care about the three mana, three, two haste part, then you're gonna be missing out on a lot of, I think, pretty good value here.

Speaker 1:
[76:26] Yeah, I would start off a little lower. There's just gonna be a lot of times when you don't have a target for it. It's also fairly mana-intensive. One red red is a little tough, and then if you want to actually get the rocket volley off, it's probably gonna have to wait till next turn, which gives your opponent a pretty wide window. Two toughness on a difficult-to-cast three drop is not ideal. Haste does make up for some of it. But my guess is that this thing plays out like at a C-level. It's a little difficult to cast, and the extra part isn't always applicable. What do you think?

Speaker 2:
[76:59] Yeah, I have seen this card a couple of times in drafts and just chosen not to take it because it didn't really seem like it was gonna be that useful.

Speaker 1:
[77:08] Steel of the Show is next. It's two and a red for a sorcery at rare. It says choose one or both. Target player discards any number of cards then draws that many cards. This is sorcery. The other option is Steel of the Show deals damage equal to the number of instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard to target creature or planeswalker.

Speaker 2:
[77:29] Yeah, card's great. I mean, you get to do some rummaging first, and then it just kills something in a heavy spell deck. Obviously, you have to be playing one of the 13 plus spell decks, 15 plus spell decks, but in those decks, this is a B where it just gives you some filtering and can kill even a pretty massive thing. The downside, of course, is sometimes this card won't do anything, but you do get to discard spells and then have the damage happen.

Speaker 1:
[77:54] Does it count itself in that, too?

Speaker 2:
[77:56] It does not, no. It's not in the graveyard.

Speaker 1:
[77:58] But the things you discard are counted.

Speaker 2:
[78:00] Yeah, so if they have a 4-4 out, you have two spells in your graveyard. You can cast this, discard two spells. You have to discard cards that are real. There is a drawback there, but if you got to kill their 5-5 flying before it kills you, then yeah, it'll work.

Speaker 1:
[78:13] You could deck your opponent?

Speaker 2:
[78:16] No, because they can-

Speaker 1:
[78:17] Do they choose the number of cards?

Speaker 2:
[78:19] They choose, yeah. Okay, so you can't do that.

Speaker 1:
[78:23] The first card just has me looking for any ways to alternate win con this stupid set. What do you want to give Steele the show? Build a round B minus? B.

Speaker 2:
[78:32] I'll just give it a B. It's, I think, a pretty solid card.

Speaker 1:
[78:37] Next up is Magma Blood Archaic. This costs, well, depending on how you want to spend it, it costs triple red, but any of those red can be substituted by two generic mana. So it could cost six generic mana or any combination of either red or two generic. So a little bit of a weird cost, but it's a two, two avatar at rare. It has both trample and reach. And when you see that on a three mana, potentially three mana two, two, you gotta think it's gonna get bigger. And it does, it has converged. This creature enters with a plus one plus one counter on it for each color of mana spent to cast it. So you can fill that generic mana with other colors to make it bigger. And then it says, whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, creatures you control get plus one plus zero and talent of turn for each color of mana spent to cast that spell. What a weird card. I love the baseline, right, of just like a big trample reacher that this could pay off for converged, but that second ability is strange.

Speaker 2:
[79:39] So in a blue red deck, you would cast this for, let's say, red, red, blue, blue for four mana, and you would end up with-

Speaker 1:
[79:49] Red, red, blue, colorless even.

Speaker 2:
[79:51] Sure, yeah, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[79:52] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[79:53] You'd end up with a four, four. And-

Speaker 1:
[79:56] Reach trample.

Speaker 2:
[79:57] Four mana, four, four, trample, reach, and then all your spells give all your creatures probably plus two plus O, because you, at most, casting.

Speaker 1:
[80:05] Yeah, plus one plus O or plus two plus O is kind of the baseline.

Speaker 2:
[80:07] Yeah, I mean, that's a strong card. I think this is very much tilted towards the Prismari aggro deck, as opposed to the, or a witherhold, or a, sorry, witherhold deck, because I think, lorehold is going to be much more interested in four mana, four, four, and goes wider, so the ability is higher. I don't think this is actually a great converged payoff for the converged deck, because those decks are, first of all, not going to have double red as often, so they're going to be spending five mana to cast. This is probably going to be like a five, five, maybe even a six, six, maybe even a seven, seven, who knows?

Speaker 1:
[80:41] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[80:42] But they're also not going to have tons of creatures in play for it to get your spells giving plus three plus O is just not that relevant when you're not attacking them that much. So it's a powerful card. I would probably give it like a B overall.

Speaker 1:
[80:55] I think so too.

Speaker 2:
[80:57] Feel like you want to be either, you want to be aggressive and have a lot of creatures, at which point I think it's a reasonably strong card. So that's aggressive Prismari or Lorehold, but not so much the controlling version of either deck, is my guess, and not really so much converge.

Speaker 1:
[81:11] Help me get my mind around this. So if I'm in conversion, I want to spend, I want to make it the full amount. I can spend like blue, green, black, white, red, and I get my five counters on it, right? Because I've spent exactly five mana of one of each color. What if I want to do four colors?

Speaker 2:
[81:39] What's the question?

Speaker 1:
[81:40] Well, with this mana cost, like it either needs to be red or two mana. So like I could do like red and then one extra red plus a white and then like a blue green, something like that, to make it to get the to get it to four. Yeah. Sorry, my brain's just having a little bit of a short circuit about whether I'm required to spend a red or if I have to pay the two mana, how that kind of maps out with amount of mana spent. Because I can spend red, red, blue green, right? That's a four mana total with the-

Speaker 2:
[82:20] You want to spend four mana and make it a five, five?

Speaker 1:
[82:23] I want to know, can I fit that into this mana cost?

Speaker 2:
[82:27] You can spend red plus blue green plus, oh, I see, white red. I think you can spend-

Speaker 1:
[82:34] Is that still five mana total that I've spent and then I get my four plus one plus one counters?

Speaker 2:
[82:39] Honestly, I don't know how hybrid work, whether you can spend white red to pay the two cost or not.

Speaker 1:
[82:44] Or if it's just the red itself. Anyway, a little weird, but this does get a counter. If I just spend triple red, it still gets a counter, right?

Speaker 2:
[82:54] Yeah, you still spent a red on it.

Speaker 1:
[82:58] So I'm getting the counter, and then if I can throw in an extra color here or there, then I can get an extra. And if I do all five, it's actually seven, seven, like you said. Anyway, cool card. We'll give it a B for now, but we will be interesting to see how that plays out. And also how Arena handles the casting of it. Next is our last red card. It is Improvisation Capstone. This is five red, red for a sorcery lesson at Mythic Rare. This is the Paradigm card. And it says exile cards from the top of your library until you exile cards with total mana value four or greater. You may cast any number of spells from among them without paying their mana cost. And then as I mentioned, this is the Paradigm one where you get to cast it for free at the beginning of your first main phase for the rest of the game.

Speaker 2:
[83:45] So one of the things that's interesting about this is, this is like the Thought Dream Theft or whatever from Lore and Eclipse, right? The five blue, five blue, blue spell. If you flip a four, it's done. But if you flip a three and then an eight, you get to cast both.

Speaker 1:
[83:59] I see.

Speaker 2:
[83:59] So like there's a pretty wide range in like how this plays out. And the best way, the best thing you can possibly do is hit like a one, then a two, and then a seven, and you get like three spells, ten total. But you know you're getting a four at least. Like the minimum is either get, well, not a four. You know you're getting at least four mana of spells, two twos or a three and a one, or like I said, a three and a ten, whatever. Most of the time on first cast, you're going to be down. Second cast, you're going to be up almost all the time because you're at least getting eight mana worth of spells, but probably more. I mean, in a lot of decks, if you don't actually have a lot of specifically exactly forecasting cost cards, you are pretty likely to hit like a lower one than a higher one and get like a ton of mana value off this.

Speaker 1:
[84:45] We need to have Frank run the numbers on that, Frank Karsten, but I bet you there's configurations where you could average higher pretty consistently. Does this win the game? Yeah. I mean, this does give us that inevitability that we talked about it. It feels like once again, going back to the blue one, that if you're in any type of reasonable board state and you fire off improvisation capstone, like you are going to generate value enough to just win the game without having to do much else over the course of turns, it will give you that inevitability. The questions come in on, can your red deck make seven mana consistently? Do you get to that point of the game or can it ramp or do something along those lines? One treasure or something like that goes a long way in situations like this. Then the other question is just, can you survive the turn you cast it? If you cast it, you get a three drop and a two drop, is that enough to get you to that next first main phase? Because once it gets going, you're going to just completely overwhelm your opponent. I'm definitely interested. I want to do it.

Speaker 2:
[85:51] It looks pretty good to me.

Speaker 1:
[85:52] It does to me too.

Speaker 2:
[85:52] I had it once, but I didn't cast it a lot of times so I don't really know how good it is. But it does seem-

Speaker 1:
[85:57] Were you in Prismari when you had it?

Speaker 2:
[86:00] I was like Timur.

Speaker 1:
[86:01] Timur.

Speaker 2:
[86:02] I was Timur Bigspawn.

Speaker 1:
[86:03] That's probably the best place for it, because you can get a little bit of mana ramp in there.

Speaker 2:
[86:08] Yeah, I think so. And it was good, the one game I casted. I think I only casted once. But I think that this again looks- I mean, those of us who enjoy kind of weird, long game win conditions are feasting this set.

Speaker 1:
[86:21] We really are.

Speaker 2:
[86:22] Let me tell you.

Speaker 1:
[86:24] This is beautiful. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[86:26] I think this looks like a really good finisher. I wouldn't put it in an aggressive deck really, but it costs seven mana, but this will close out the game.

Speaker 1:
[86:34] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[86:34] You can stop playing this just like all the other ones, which you might if you're worried about getting decked, and it does blow past all the lands.

Speaker 1:
[86:43] And they're gone, right?

Speaker 2:
[86:45] Oh yeah, they're just gone. You can also choose not to play the spells. So if you hit a card draw spell, you could choose not to play it or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[86:52] Oh, okay. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[86:53] If you wanted to, you have a couple safety valves.

Speaker 1:
[86:55] That is a little dangerous.

Speaker 2:
[86:56] I think I would give this probably a B+.

Speaker 1:
[86:59] That's what I was thinking too.

Speaker 2:
[87:00] It's worse than the blue one, for example, because it costs one more. That's actually the biggest reason it's worse. But also, sometimes this won't affect the board. Sometimes you will cast this and you'll hit whatever four mana idiot card that you put in your deck that doesn't affect the board. I'm sure there's plenty. But you know, like Zamoan's four mana, look at the top five cards, put lands into play card, right? Like you want to cast that one first. Cask it after this is a lot less good.

Speaker 1:
[87:24] Dude, this card's sweet, man. I really want to ramp to that. Yeah. It's earlier the better for that thing too, man. Once you get that ball rolling it, you're not going to get buried. B plus for Improvisation Capsule. That's the last red card. Our first green card is Ambitious Augmentor. This is green for a 1-1 Turtle Wizard at rare. It has increment. And when this creature dies, if it had one or more counters on it, create a 0-0 green and blue Fractal Creature token that put this creature's counters on that token. That's cool.

Speaker 2:
[87:56] This is an incredible card.

Speaker 1:
[87:58] Yeah, it's a really nice 1-drop, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[87:59] A 1-mana 1-1 that grows very quickly because of increment and just dies into a copy of itself basically.

Speaker 1:
[88:05] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[88:06] It's going to be almost as big. Slightly actually, one smaller because this has always got a 1-1 instead of a counter. But still, you're putting places on turn one, it's not like Rogovan levels, but this does, it's going to feel pretty bad. This is going to be a problem. You're going to, it's like a Lumenark Aspirant that when it dies, leaves a 3-3 in play. Like, so yes, there are times when this isn't a great draw, but even late in the game, turn six, cast this, then you play your five drop. You've got a 2-2 that dies into a 1-1, and the next turn it becomes a 3-3 or 4-4 that dies into a big thing. I like B plus on a vicious logmater. One of the best ways to start a game here.

Speaker 1:
[88:39] That has to be one of the scariest cards to open a game up with from the opponent's perspective. Next up is Slumbering Trudge. This is green X for a 6-6 plant beast. It's rare. It says this creature enters with a number of stun counters on it equal to 3 minus X. If it entered with a stun counter on it, tap it. What does this thing do?

Speaker 2:
[89:08] So for green and three, it has no stun? You end up with a 6-6.

Speaker 1:
[89:13] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[89:13] Four mana, 6-6, no drawback. Doesn't even come to play tapped. For one mana, which I had, literally one of the first games of this format, my opponent played this on turn one. It's really good on turn one.

Speaker 1:
[89:23] Does it just feel like suspend or something?

Speaker 2:
[89:26] Yeah, a 6-6 with suspend three for one mana.

Speaker 1:
[89:30] That's nuts.

Speaker 2:
[89:32] That's a nutty card. It's slightly worse because when it takes the last counter off, it still doesn't untap. So it's kind of like plus one because you play it, it has three counters, next turn two, next turn one, next turn zero, but it's still tapped.

Speaker 1:
[89:44] Right, right, right.

Speaker 2:
[89:45] But still it's just one mana. And then later in the game, there's no drawback because you just cast it for four mana. Like in a top deck scenario. But even casting it on like turn two or turn three, like it's still, it's coming. So I like B for slumbering trudge. This is just a really, really scary card.

Speaker 1:
[90:01] I love that.

Speaker 2:
[90:02] Also like there are some like random combos with untapping, I'm sure somewhere in there, but like I'm not worried about that. Plus even when it's stunned, it's pretty good at biting things. So like if you have any bite or fight spells.

Speaker 1:
[90:11] Totally. And it is worth noting that rules wise, like basically stun counters say if this were to untap, then remove the stun counter instead. I've seen people try to untap it like through non-untap ways and think that it will, but it just removes a counter. So keep that in mind. Next up is, and what I meant is non-untap step ways. Next up is Comforting Council. This is one on a green for an enchantment at rare. It says, whatever you gain life, put a growth counter on this enchantment. And as long as there are five or more growth counters on this enchantment, creatures you control get plus three, plus three. Man, I just don't like the fact that I often have to swing one of my pests into its death to get a counter on this. And then they're all dead by the time this thing actually gets going. Also, five is a lot.

Speaker 2:
[90:59] The last turn, though.

Speaker 1:
[91:00] That is nice.

Speaker 2:
[91:01] It really immediately pops.

Speaker 1:
[91:02] That is nice. Yeah, that reminds me of, what was that, two and a green?

Speaker 2:
[91:06] The Beastmaster's Ascension.

Speaker 1:
[91:08] Yeah, Beastmaster's Ascension. It reminds me of that. This is really cool, but man, that is a heck of a lot of life gain to try to put in here, isn't it?

Speaker 2:
[91:16] Five? You know, I had this in a deck and it wasn't good for me, and my opponent had this once and immediately got up to five counters and I died really quickly, so who knows? It looks like a build around, certainly a build around, it looks like probably closer to a build around C than A, like it's somewhere in the C to B range. This looks to me like the kind of card, it's like a win more card during draft, where you've drafted the nut witherbloom deck, then yeah, Comforting Council probably is going to be good in your deck.

Speaker 1:
[91:44] So if I see them with five pests, it's live now, like they're all individual things that are adding counters. Okay, that's cool, that is cool. Yeah, so build around potential very high then.

Speaker 2:
[91:58] Yeah, I mean, I would say this looks, I would say probably like a build around B, but it's closer to a C level. I think that this card is going to be featured in a lot of games where a witherbloom player loses with three counters on this and this in play.

Speaker 1:
[92:12] Definitely, but under the streamline perfect build, this thing's going to be a house. Next is Emeritus of Abundance. This is two in a green for a three, four elf druid at mythic rare. It has vigilance and it enters prepared. And whenever this creature attacks, if you control eight or more lands, it becomes prepared again. So once again, I mean, this is a mythic rare, so fair enough, but three mana, three, four vigilance prepared that can get re-prepared. And its spell is regrowth, one in a green sorcery return target card from your graveyard to your hand. This is all the way from Alpha. And this is before they kind of started distinguishing between, well, maybe green should get permanence and blue and red should get spell, you know, that kind of thing. It's just card. This is whatever you want out of your graveyard.

Speaker 2:
[92:58] I mean, five mana for a three, four that immediately regrowth something. Sure, I would be pretty happy with that.

Speaker 1:
[93:03] That is nuts.

Speaker 2:
[93:04] This is way better than that.

Speaker 1:
[93:06] This is so nuts. I'm giving them a lot of rope because it's mythic, so it's like, I get it. But man, again, kind of reminds me of the demonic tutor thing where you're like, well, in demonic tutors case, it's adding mana and blah, blah, blah. This one's like, oh, you need something decent in your graveyard. It's like, you just need anything. I don't even care what it is. You're just, if you can snap off just buying something back, you're getting a two for one. And if this thing, if you've done any ramping or extra lands on the battlefield, or if the game goes along, this thing just becomes a car dry engine, that's just nuts.

Speaker 2:
[93:39] Yeah. I would give Emeritus of Bonsoneil. There's really just not a kind of game where this card isn't good. It's good as a three-four vigilance. It's good as a top deck in the late game. I mean, Matt, you've...

Speaker 1:
[93:51] Great.

Speaker 2:
[93:52] Any game where you both have eight plus lands and you're just on top decks, this is going to win you the game 85, 90% of the time, whatever. And it's good just in the middle of the game like turn five play, play this, get back my four drop. And, you know, it also even threatens to do it again. So it's not like the story's over. So yeah, I like A. I hope for abundance in all things.

Speaker 1:
[94:13] Next up is Vast Lens Scavenger. This is one green green for a four four bear druid at rare. Interestingly, it has death touch. You don't see that on a four four that often, but there it is. It also enters prepared and its spell is Bind to Life, which is four in a green for an instant that says mill seven cards, then put a creature card from among them onto the battlefield. Man, they really push these. There is no doubt about that. Mill seven cards always makes me slightly nervous, but this isn't green and you're probably fine. But man, you're getting a creature card from those seven milled cards right in the play for five mana. And it's on top of your three mana four four death touch. Like what is going on here? And this is just a regular rare too.

Speaker 2:
[95:07] Yeah, no, the Vastland Scavenger is awesome.

Speaker 1:
[95:11] That's an instant too?

Speaker 2:
[95:13] I would probably give it an A minus.

Speaker 1:
[95:16] I would too.

Speaker 2:
[95:17] You just three mana for a four four death touch that just casts a great five mana spell at instant speed at some point. Sure, why not?

Speaker 1:
[95:24] Like you play it and then there's just this one turn window, right? And then the next turn you play your fifth land and it's just like your opponents, like, oh, I can't do anything anymore. The cool part about the design, though, is that they did make it more or less impossible to like play and activate in the same turn. Realistically, like you have to get to eight mana to do that with triple green. So you are going to leave this thing open at some, you know, you're just going to play it on three and it's just going to be the best thing. And then if you survive two turns and hit your land drops, it's just going to dominate. That is sweet. Also, they can't even attack and do it after you hit your fifth land. Right? Like what are they going to do? Just even if you attack with this, they're just not going to want to attack and to bind to life and just get blown out by some five five. That's going to block them. Amazing card. Next up is planer engineering. This is three and a green for a sorcery at rare. Sacrifice two land, search your library for four basic land cards, put them on to the battlefield tapped and then shuffle. Again, sorcery speed on that.

Speaker 2:
[96:23] I think you would play this in the converge deck, but it's not that great. I mean, we've seen spending four to get two lands. This is sac two, get four, but whatever. Same thing for now. Plenty of times and it's just not been good for a while. Right. We've seen it in a bunch of different sets. It used to be good. Explosive vegetation, very old card from onslaught and it was great. You cast it on turn four and you cast a seven drop. And it's like there is some elements of this strategy that can work. I do think this and the Zimone card, the three in the green Zimone card, which are very similar, are cards you would play in your Converge decks and that's all totally fine. But this is like a build around C where in Converge exactly this, you can justify this. You just can't justify this in like a Quandrax deck. It's just not good. And it is better to be able to sac two lands and get four because you get to search for four lands. So you could get up to four different types. Let's say you only had islands and forests, this gets you plain swamp mountains. You get all of them and it thins out your deck, which generally you do want to do. But this is effectively just going to get two lands and not a card. I think it's basically a D, but the Converge decks will play it sometimes.

Speaker 1:
[97:29] Yeah, I view this as a bridge to a different part of the game. But you need to have all of it on the other side. Expensive, multicolored, like you need to be dropping just houses on your opponent every turn after you cast Planar Engineering. Next up is Wild Growth Archaic. This is green-green, or you can substitute either of the greens for two mana. Again, similar for a 0-0 trample reach avatar rare. So a lot of similarities here. And it has Converge, this creature enters with a plus one plus one counter for each color of mana spent to cast it. And it says whenever you cast a creature spell, that creature enters with X additional plus one plus one counters on it, where X is the number of colors of mana spent to cast it.

Speaker 2:
[98:15] So this is like the red one, except great.

Speaker 1:
[98:18] Yeah, except for it's cheaper and gives it to all your creatures.

Speaker 2:
[98:22] It's just a much more powerful trigger. Like you care a lot more about getting your creatures a plus one plus one counter than you do whatever this is. So yeah.

Speaker 1:
[98:33] I mean, any gold card comes with two plus one plus one counters, any single color card comes with an additional. And those are no joke. And this thing.

Speaker 2:
[98:42] Spent to cast it, not even their colors. So like a single color creature is still getting two or three counters on it.

Speaker 1:
[98:47] Oh, if you're full converge or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[98:50] Or even if you're just two colors, a two, a monocolor creatures, you're still spending two kinds of colors on it. You don't have to spend just one. Like, right.

Speaker 1:
[98:58] Oh, I see. So you're, you're basically always getting the two counters.

Speaker 2:
[99:01] You're always getting two. You're really not getting one unless it's a one drop in which case you can't. So that's nuts. And it's anywhere from a two mana, two, two, two, a four mana, four, four, kind of up to you. You could do it however you wanted it mostly.

Speaker 1:
[99:13] And it has that really nice combo of trample and reach. I've talked about it before, but that's a really nice meeting the board where it sits combination of abilities. You know, if you're attacking tramples, great. If you're on the defensive reaches is a nice thing to have. That's card looks amazing.

Speaker 2:
[99:31] Yeah. Looks really good.

Speaker 1:
[99:32] Much better than the red one. I would give it a build around A-. Maybe even an A.

Speaker 2:
[99:41] I don't think it's a build around. Are you going to be unhappy with this in your blue-green deck?

Speaker 1:
[99:45] I was going to give it a slightly lower grade at the non-build around.

Speaker 2:
[99:49] Oh, well, what I'm saying is like, I don't think you...

Speaker 1:
[99:51] If you're converging this card, it's just absolutely nuts, right?

Speaker 2:
[99:55] But I don't even think that changes that much because in a normal two-color deck, you still just cast it and you're getting two different, two counters on all your creatures.

Speaker 1:
[100:02] So just any green deck? Do you even just play it in not green?

Speaker 2:
[100:06] You could totally play this in like... Imagine you're a red-white deck.

Speaker 1:
[100:10] Is this Lordwold snapping this off?

Speaker 2:
[100:11] You spend four mana for a two, you spend four mana for a two-two with this ability, you would still be okay with that.

Speaker 1:
[100:16] Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[100:17] I would give wild growth archaic just like an A minus.

Speaker 1:
[100:20] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[100:20] Just A minus across the board.

Speaker 1:
[100:22] And it looks like it may even show up in any colors of deck. That's just wild growth archaic. Next up is Germination Practicum. This is three green green for a sorcery lesson. This is a paradigm card. It's mythic rare. And it says put two plus one plus one counters on each creature you control. And then as I mentioned, it has paradigm. So you get to do that every turn.

Speaker 2:
[100:44] I mean, come on. This one is just all the paradigm cards rolled up into like only five mana. Yes, it requires creatures. If you have two creatures in play, this is still four, four worth of stats.

Speaker 1:
[100:56] You just need creatures.

Speaker 2:
[100:58] This card just looks unbeatable.

Speaker 1:
[100:59] You have to have creatures. That's it. If you meet that bar, you're going to win the game very quickly. This is the most, this is the one that wins the game the quickest. Like you may even just win the turn that you cast this. If you have this board. Yeah. And if not, you would have to wait one turn. It does have a more significant fail case, but it's green. Like if you just have a board with no creatures on it, something weird happened. Like you either miss built your deck or you got, you ran into a sweeper or something like that. So I like A for germination practicum. Yes, technically it has to build around of making sure that you have creatures, but come on, you're going to do that. Do you like A for it?

Speaker 2:
[101:39] Yeah. I honestly think this card could be an A plus. Like yes, if you don't have a creature in play.

Speaker 1:
[101:44] Respect the lack of creatures that occasionally happens.

Speaker 2:
[101:47] I don't know. If you have one creature in play, this card is still pretty good.

Speaker 1:
[101:51] It does get you.

Speaker 2:
[101:52] Okay. Let me ask you a question. Just before, this is obviously we're cobbling here, but what else is a podcast for literally? This is the one time where it's not only acceptable, but encouraged exactly. If your opponent goes like you're playing a spell control, like you had a lot of removal and you killed a creature on turn three, you killed a creature on turn two and turn three, and then on turn four to cast a creature, they cast this, you go, ha ha, kill your creature. How do you feel about that game? I feel like, yeah, the board's clear, they have this thing and it's just like.

Speaker 1:
[102:26] No, you're right, because I'm going to be drawing a lot more removal. Right.

Speaker 2:
[102:30] This isn't an overrun where if you don't have creatures in play, it does nothing. This is a card that just sits there for free, getting cast every turn. It's a little bit like when your opponent has an Umuzao's Jitte in play and you're like, they cast it on turn two and cube and you choose not to mana leak it. You're like, all right, you know what? I am accepting the condition that I can just never let a creature stick, but I can let this one through. Well, germination is like that, but in Limited, not cube. You're just not killing all their creatures most of the time. I think it's actually just an A plus. I just don't think, this card is just not, it's almost impossible to interact with.

Speaker 1:
[103:01] I am not giving this an A plus under any circumstance. That is reserved for cards that can save you from a situation where you're significantly behind and this does not do that at all. If anything, I would lean it towards A minus in that context, but I would just give it an A because it's so powerful.

Speaker 2:
[103:20] What's the side of history for that one?

Speaker 1:
[103:21] I gave it an A. I mean, it's super powerful. It's not an A plus. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 2:
[103:26] Okay, separate question. Do you think this is gonna be in the top five win rates of cards in the set?

Speaker 1:
[103:33] No.

Speaker 2:
[103:35] Do you think it's gonna be in the top 10?

Speaker 1:
[103:36] Yeah, probably.

Speaker 2:
[103:40] I'd take top five. We'll see.

Speaker 1:
[103:42] Okay, cool.

Speaker 2:
[103:42] It's close either way.

Speaker 1:
[103:43] Yeah, it's in that range though. Yeah. I mean, dude, this card in the set has some absolutely absurd cards. You could just get one mana cards that take over from what we've seen. Let's move on to white before we go to gold. First card up is erode. This is white for an instant at rare. It says destroy a target creature or planeswalker. Its controller may search the library for a basic land card, put it on the battlefield, tapped, and then shuffle.

Speaker 2:
[104:11] Wow. Fantastic card. It's path to exile. It doesn't, well, it doesn't literally exile. Planeswalkers, which actually does make it a little worse, I would say.

Speaker 1:
[104:20] Is there a card called path to destruction already or something?

Speaker 2:
[104:24] I think so.

Speaker 1:
[104:25] That would have worked for me.

Speaker 2:
[104:26] I mean, maybe. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[104:27] But still, we are still happy to play this in limited, right? Because remember, we often bash on the cards that say destroy something, but your opponent gets something. Usually, it's an on the board creature or a card or something like that. How do we feel about how this works, where they get a land, that you ramp them?

Speaker 2:
[104:45] This card is awesome. This card is probably like A minus level removal, just because we already have this example of Path to Exile, which we've played with in a couple of different normal limited formats at this point.

Speaker 1:
[104:55] At uncommon.

Speaker 2:
[104:56] And yeah, once the game hits turn six, it's just one mana removal at instant speed, basically no drawback. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's about as good as removal ever gets. So it's no source to pleasures, but I would say erode's an A minus.

Speaker 1:
[105:09] Yeah, erode A minus. Next up is Informed Inkwright. This is one in a white for a 2-2 human wizard at rare. It has Vigilance and it has Repartee. Whenever you cast an instant or a sorcery spell that targets a creature, create a 1-1 white and black inkling creature token with flying. Holy smokes. Yeah, I mean, I guess it would have to be a build around A because you're putting a silver quill, but I'd give it like a B plus outside of that.

Speaker 2:
[105:49] I don't even think that that's true because repartee-

Speaker 1:
[105:52] I guess if you just do one, you're already happy.

Speaker 2:
[105:55] Repartee is just, any deck will be able to trigger repartee a pretty decent amount of the time. Just because-

Speaker 1:
[106:01] Yeah, they'll have three or four cards, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[106:05] I mean, most decks have more than three or four ways to target something.

Speaker 1:
[106:08] Do they?

Speaker 2:
[106:10] I would imagine so.

Speaker 1:
[106:11] I mean, I would guess like four removal spells.

Speaker 2:
[106:13] You're not playing 18 or 19 creatures in your average deck, right?

Speaker 1:
[106:16] No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:
[106:18] You're playing like 14, so you're gonna have like nine spells that target or something, because almost every card that's not that is gonna be a spell that targets. Like seven, I would say like, average is probably six or seven, just between. Because if you don't have removal, you have combat tricks. If you don't have either of those, yeah, maybe it's like card draw or some other weird stuff, but I would say you're gonna be.

Speaker 1:
[106:37] I would guess the average is like five probably, like in a card, in a deck that doesn't care about it otherwise, maybe six, yeah. No, you're right, but one trigger's great, right? Like you get a one, one, one.

Speaker 2:
[106:48] One trigger's great, yeah. I would say it's an A. Like if I started with this card, I'd be really thrilled. It's also cheap enough that you really do want to play this on turn four while casting a spell that triggers it. No real reason to like play this on turn two and just not get the value.

Speaker 1:
[107:04] Next up is Joined Researchers. This is one in a white for a two, two, human cleric wizard at rare. It has first strike. They just threw on random abilities onto everything. It's just like, this card's great and it has vigilance. This card's great and this one has first strike. It says at the beginning of each end step, if an opponent has more cards in hand than you, this creature becomes prepared. And its spell is Secret Rendezvous, which is one white, white for a sorcery, you and target opponent each draw three cards. So two mana, two, two, first strike. If you get behind on cards, you get prepared and then you can cast Secret Rendezvous. And unfortunately, it gives you and your opponent the cards. Now, this is a little interesting because normally, you know, one of the big knocks on these symmetrical cards is that you're the one that has to pay the card out of your hand to do it. This does alleviate that part, but you do still have to spend the mana, you're down the tempo on it. Generally, I shy away from cards. My knee-jerk reaction is uh-uh, I don't want to give my opponent three cards even if I get them. Is that still true here?

Speaker 2:
[108:10] Oh, totally. I think that I would mostly evaluate this card as like two mana, two two, first strike, with upside, not zero upside, but not a lot of upside, honestly.

Speaker 1:
[108:22] So like C minus?

Speaker 2:
[108:25] That's a C, I think. I would just give it a C.

Speaker 1:
[108:27] C for join researchers. Next up is Antiquities on the Loose. That's a great card name. One white, white for a sorcery.

Speaker 2:
[108:35] Yeah, great card.

Speaker 1:
[108:36] Oh, sweet. One white, white for a sorcery at rare. Create two, two, two red and white spirit creature tokens. Then if this spell was cast from anywhere other than your hand, put a plus one, plus one counter on each spirit you control. Wow. And it flashes back. This is kind of the joke there for four white, white. Dude, that's a nice one.

Speaker 2:
[108:57] Yeah, this card, this card's absurd.

Speaker 1:
[108:59] That is awesome.

Speaker 2:
[109:00] Three mana for two, two, two is already something lorehold would be pretty happy with. That's just, it just plays into their themes. Can you flash it back and you get not only two, three, threes at the floor, it also makes your other spirits bigger that may be stuck around. Especially since this is happening, so.

Speaker 1:
[109:16] And you get a lorehold trigger.

Speaker 2:
[109:18] Yeah, I'm at A minus for Antiquities on the loose. The card I think is just army in the can by one of the better ones that we've ever seen.

Speaker 1:
[109:24] Totally, A minus for Antiquities on the loose. I love the name too. Next is Emeritus of Truce. This is one white white for a 3-3 cat cleric. This one is Mythic Rare. It says, when this creature enters, target player creates a 1-1 white and black inkling creature token with flying. Then if an opponent controls more creatures than you, this creature becomes prepared and its spell is literally Swords to Plowshares. White for an instant, eggshell target creature. Its controller gains life equal to its power. Swords to Plowshares, widely considered the best removal spell of all time.

Speaker 2:
[110:04] That's awesome.

Speaker 1:
[110:05] That is awesome.

Speaker 2:
[110:05] I just love getting to cast Swords.

Speaker 1:
[110:07] But I always give myself the token.

Speaker 2:
[110:09] What?

Speaker 1:
[110:10] You had two?

Speaker 2:
[110:12] And I can tell you, well, it was a weird deck because I also had four of the four mana three, three that makes a one on flyer. So I wasn't getting to cast Swords to Plowshares that often.

Speaker 1:
[110:21] Yeah, I was going to ask, is that even part, it's nice to have the option, but it really just feels like I want to target myself with this all the time, right?

Speaker 2:
[110:30] Well, I don't know about all the time. I think most of the time, yes. So because of this making a one-one, and it has to either go to your side or their side, it actually means that a lot of the time you're not going to get prepared. In order to play this and make a one-one and get to cast Swords, they have to have three creatures to your none, which can happen, but isn't going to happen that often. And you also really want to have triple white available because you don't want to pass the turn with a swords in the holster and then they just kill this. Giving them a creature though, let's say you have one creature and they have two, well, you still can't give them a creature and get something. Sorry, if you're tied, you have to play this and you have to give yourself the creature because if you give them one, this is a creature itself, so it's going to bump you up to too many. I would say that as one white white 3-3 that makes a 1-1 flyer on your side all the time, this would still be like a B minus just because that's just a pretty effective cheap card even at double white.

Speaker 1:
[111:28] Amazing, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[111:30] I think that the ability bumps it up to a B, not much, but it does happen. Sometimes they just have more creatures than you.

Speaker 1:
[111:35] I agree.

Speaker 2:
[111:36] Sometimes giving them a 1-1 flying and killing their best creature is still worth it.

Speaker 1:
[111:40] Right. If there is that fail case of you being way behind and them having a bomb, you can do the thing. But giving them a 1-1 fly is a major, major cost. I just would have such a hard time.

Speaker 2:
[111:50] You really don't want to do that. The other thing is, I found in Black White, there's just a bunch of ways to get this back. So having this cost three and recycle it and just making 1-1s is pretty good, which is true of the common version of this that cost four as well, but mana savings do matter.

Speaker 1:
[112:06] Indeed. So B for Emeritus of Truce. Next up is Practiced Offense. This is two and a white for a sorcery at rare. Put a plus one plus one counter on each creature target player controls. Target creature gains your choice of double strike or lifelink until end of turn. And then this also flashes back and it interestingly flashes back for one less mana than it cost to cast, which is one and a white.

Speaker 2:
[112:30] It's just another ridiculous card. I'm feeling like this is going to be a Prince format, to be honest.

Speaker 1:
[112:35] Like it does feel like that. These things are like, this is a complete game ending card for five mana, right?

Speaker 2:
[112:41] Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1:
[112:43] Double strike and lifelink spread around?

Speaker 2:
[112:45] You have three creatures in play and you're like, all right, well, I'll cast this. And then one of my creatures gets lifelink. And so I can attack you and hit you for a bunch and then gain some life. Or double strike if you don't care about gaining life. Or like you just mentioned, you just wait till five mana. All your creatures get plus two, plus two. And one of them gets double strike and lifelink. And just, oh yeah, that game is going to be over.

Speaker 1:
[113:03] That game is going to be over. And they're counters. Even if you don't win that turn, you just have this massive board. And especially if you did the double thing, now you just gained four life or eight life or something like that, or even more. Yeah, I mean, this has the caveats about needing to have creatures. Wow, right? Like that's not difficult.

Speaker 2:
[113:25] It's also like both of the white schools, Silver Quill and Lorehold, are pretty creature-centric.

Speaker 1:
[113:31] Definitely.

Speaker 2:
[113:32] So this is even better than, like, for example, the green card that we disagreed on the value of, the green paradigm card. You make the argument that Quandrix does not always have the most creatures. Well, practice offense has no such argument. So I would give it an A.

Speaker 1:
[113:50] I would too.

Speaker 2:
[113:51] We're giving away a lot of A's, but man, these are strong cards, you know?

Speaker 1:
[113:55] Yeah, that's rough. A for practice offense. Next one is Sturin Hopesinger. This is two and a white. And by the way, it is interesting that we've only got one more white card in our, and you know, we go and set reviews.

Speaker 2:
[114:05] There's a lot of gold cards.

Speaker 1:
[114:07] And this is three mana still. Like these cards are very, very cheap. Two and a white for a one, three bird bard at rare. It's got flying and lifelink. It has repartee whenever you cast an extra story spell that targets a creature, put a plus one plus one counter on each creature you control. What in the world?

Speaker 2:
[114:28] This card is just absolutely, it's going in a one, three flying lifelink. The first spell, it just already becomes a two, four flying lifelink. By itself, it's still really good.

Speaker 1:
[114:39] Lord. And we were talking earlier about the average deck, right? Not even one that's trying to get repartee triggered like every turn or most turns. It's already a bomb in a regular deck. If you're actually really going for the repartee thing, that just gets absolutely out of hand. This is definitely a card where you would hope to cast it plus trigger repartee the same turn, for sure, right?

Speaker 2:
[115:07] Yeah, if you can, obviously that is gonna be better.

Speaker 1:
[115:10] You'd be pretty nervous about just running this out and having them go, cool, kill it. And you're like, oh, okay. I'd give it an A.

Speaker 2:
[115:18] It's an A, like it's obviously just like a ridiculous card.

Speaker 1:
[115:22] And then it jumps, by the way, our last white card all the way up to seven mana for restoration seminar, five white white. This is sorcery lesson. This is the paradigm card for white. It's mythic rare. It says, return target non-land permanent card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Yeah, this reminds me of the red one, right? Like it is inevitability.

Speaker 2:
[115:43] Yeah. I mean, it's obviously, this is probably the most likely one to just fail. Definitely. If you don't have a card in your graveyard that's good, or you return a permanent, but then you do need a second one on your turn in order to have this work. This is actually my least favorite one. I think I'd probably give this restoration seminar like a D.

Speaker 1:
[116:05] I would too. I mean, this one is seven mana cost the most that these have cost so far, and it easily has the highest set up cost. Yeah, I am not convinced. I mean, if the game, you know, if this was in a color pair that made the game go really long, I would be much more into it, but white kind of looks like it's trying to get the game over. So I would go D on that as well. Okay, let's move over to gold. I'm sure these cards are going to be much worse than the monocolored cards we've just gone over. First gold card is called Nita Forum Conciliator.

Speaker 2:
[116:40] They got forum mods out here.

Speaker 1:
[116:42] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[116:44] Trying to settle some arguments.

Speaker 1:
[116:45] Yeah, booting people. This is one.

Speaker 2:
[116:48] Silver Quill Lover 27 is really going in on Life Gain Passage 44.

Speaker 1:
[116:54] Yeah, you need to time out. This is one white, black for a two, three legendary creature. Human Advisor at Rare. And it says, whenever you cast a spell that you don't own, put a plus one plus one counter on each creature you control. What? What does that mean? I guess we'll find out. You can get two mana and sacrifice another creature. If you do, you exile target, instant or sorcery card from an opponent's graveyard. You may cast it this turn, and mana of any type may be spent to cast that spell. If that spell would be put into a graveyard, exile it instead, and you can only activate this at sorcery speed. So the two mana and sac a creature thing, that's sorcery speed. You can cast the spell anytime this turn, once you've activated it, however. And then when you do, you get to pump up your squad, but you also have to give up a team member to do so.

Speaker 2:
[117:55] Yeah, it's a mana intensive card, so you're not gonna likely be playing this sac a creature and playing a spell in the same turn all that often, though in the late game, obviously all things are possible. But when this is in play, it's, I think, a pretty threatening card. Imagine you've got a well-stocked graveyard and they have this, they play this, and you're just like, well, if I don't kill it, they're gonna trade in their worst creature to cast a good spell out of my graveyard and get plus plus one counters on everything else. Like, there is some potential there. A lot of things have to happen for this card to really tick. You need other creatures, you need a lot of mana, they need a spell, no graveyard. So, there's gonna be some clear fail cases, but as far as three mana two threes that kind of force an answer, pretty high on the list. I would probably give it a B.

Speaker 1:
[118:39] Yeah, this is actually one that would really benefit from one extra ability as far as like, if it had lifelink of Vigilance or, you know, some little extra thing, but I agree with you. It's still threatening enough. Next up is Conciliator's Duelist. This is White, White, Black, Black. That is a rough mana cost. It is a four, three core warlock at rare. And it says, when this creature enters, draw a card. Each player loses one life. Interesting. And then it has repartee, exile up to one target creature, return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning and the next end step. So it blinks-ish a creature whenever you target an instant or sorcery that targets something.

Speaker 2:
[119:22] Yeah, but it can blink itself and whenever it enters, you draw a card.

Speaker 1:
[119:25] Yeah, you draw a card and then both players lose a life. So.

Speaker 2:
[119:29] Yeah, it's not even like you're paying life for cards. Like you're, they're getting hit too.

Speaker 1:
[119:33] So it's just the mana cost.

Speaker 2:
[119:35] The mana cost is tough, but in a two color deck, you're going to cast this turn four a lot of the times, not always obviously.

Speaker 1:
[119:41] And even if you don't, it's still pretty good, right?

Speaker 2:
[119:44] And also imagine casting this on turn five and having a one to trick up the like. Oh my God.

Speaker 1:
[119:49] Yeah, you may want to wait anyway.

Speaker 2:
[119:52] Yeah, I would give an A minus to conciliator's duelist.

Speaker 1:
[119:55] I would go B plus. I mean that white, white, black, black is still tough for the mana bases that we have. Like that, I guess it just really depends on how good this thing is on turn six or whatever. Honestly, it looks fine. So yeah.

Speaker 2:
[120:08] I'm not too worried about the duelist not performing. I feel like it's just the mana cost.

Speaker 1:
[120:12] No, no, it's not the performance. Yeah, it's getting it down on the battlefield. Next up is, fix what's broken. This is too black white for a sorcery at Rare. It says, there's additional cost to cast this spell, pay X life, return each artifact and creature card with mana value X from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Speaker 2:
[120:31] Nah. And one of the things that you really should note is it's missing X or less.

Speaker 1:
[120:38] Oh, it's exactly, oh, no way.

Speaker 2:
[120:42] I like F for fix what's broken.

Speaker 1:
[120:43] I do too.

Speaker 2:
[120:44] I guess that to, just to vampires advocated here, as it were, you could try to build a deck that has really tons of two drops, really clustered in the two drop spot. And then like this can frequently get back like three or four things, but like there's so much that goes wrong with all that. Up to and including like a 10 two drop deck is gonna have a kind of low creature quality once you get past the first seven or so. So I'm not a big fan of fixing what's broken.

Speaker 1:
[121:09] No, I would leave it broken. Next up is Silver Quill, the Disputant. This is an Elder Dragon at Mythic Rare, by the way. So you'll see these around. This is two black, white, four mana for a four, four flying Vigilance. It's a legend as well. And it says each instant and sorcery spell you cast has Casualty one. And it says as you cast that spell, you may sacrifice a creature with power one or greater. When you do, copy the spell and you may choose new targets for the copy. It's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2:
[121:47] Yeah. I mean, the bulk of the quality here is a four mana, four, four flying Vigilance, which is obviously pretty strong.

Speaker 1:
[121:54] Right. And then it lets you double repartee. Is that the joke here?

Speaker 2:
[121:59] Yeah. Or just any spell that you have that's good, you can spend some mana to, I mean, sack a creature to copy it. I mean, I would probably give it an A minus just because it's a four mana, four, four flying Vigilance. And then, yeah, catching in your worst creature for another spell is, it'll come up sometimes.

Speaker 1:
[122:19] It'll come up and probably do some crazy amount of triggers on the stack type thing. But like you said, the four mana, four, four flying Vigilance is doing a lot of the lifting here. Last Silver Quill card is Moment of Reckoning. This is seven mana. So it's three white, white, black, black. That, that's a lot. It's a Sorcerer at Rare. It says choose up to four. You may choose the same mode more than once. There's actually only two things to choose from, but you get to do four of these. You can destroy target non-land permanent or, and or, you can return target non-land permanent card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Well, this is a way to end a game. That is a way to end a game. You could just literally kill four of their things, or you could kill two of their things and get two things back. Or any combination.

Speaker 2:
[123:10] Yeah, there's not that many ways to cast this that are not gonna end up winning the game. The trick is casting this. You're not gonna believe this, but I played this once. It was in that team or spells deck. I had three ways to cast it.

Speaker 1:
[123:29] You double splash, double blast. What are you doing?

Speaker 2:
[123:33] I had three ways to cast it. I had resonating loot, which makes all your lands tap for any color.

Speaker 1:
[123:37] Two of any color. Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 2:
[123:39] I had Zera in the Tempests, which is a blue, red rare that costs seven mana and lets you play a spell for free every turn.

Speaker 1:
[123:46] Okay, okay.

Speaker 2:
[123:48] And I had the red paradigm, which could flip this, though that I didn't really count so much. So I had cast the card and it was strong. My main complaint with the card is that I don't think Silver Quill is really set up to be doing this sort of thing.

Speaker 1:
[124:00] This doesn't feel like it aligns, like the seven mana, like it just feels like they want to have the game won before then.

Speaker 2:
[124:07] So I think that the most common usage of moment of reckoning is for Converge or Prismari slash Quandrix spell decks using some shenanigans to play it, which whether that be like playing spells for free or like the Converge deck that has tons of fixing or whatever. So it's a builder on A in that when you can reliably put this card on the stack, your deck is going to be awesome. Whether you'll be able to do that or not, that's the real question. And I think the average deck should probably not play this card.

Speaker 1:
[124:34] Yeah, tough mana cost, but definitely a game winner. Next up is Traumatic Critique. This is Blue-Red-X for an instant at Rare. It says Traumatic Critique deals X damage to any target, draw two cards, then discard a card. Nice.

Speaker 2:
[124:52] Awesome.

Speaker 1:
[124:52] Yeah. That's great. Any target, game winner?

Speaker 2:
[124:56] For Blue-Red, you can just draw two, discard a card. So it's already just Blue-Red, draw two, discard a card. You're not casting it very often that way, but I think what you're going to do with this is spend three to five mana to kill one of their creatures, draw two, and discard a card, which puts you not only up a card total, but you even got a loot in there, so your card quality is going to get higher too. Or spend 10 mana, nudge them for eight, you can finish them with this card, I think. So I would give an A to Traumatic Critique.

Speaker 1:
[125:24] I would too.

Speaker 2:
[125:25] It's a finisher, it's a card draw spell, it's a removal spell, it gives you card advantage. There's just no place where this is bad. It's good anywhere from two mana to 12 mana. Traumatic Critique, that must have been one hell of a review.

Speaker 1:
[125:41] No kidding. It also is interesting in that it fits perfectly into Prismari, where when you look at Moment of Reckoning, you're kind of like, well, that's powerful, but not really in line. This was fully in line with what Prismari is doing. Next up is Color Storm Stallion. This is one blue red for a three, three elemental horse at rare. It has ward one and haste, and it has opus. This creature gets plus one plus one until end of turn, and then super opus create a token that's a copy of this creature.

Speaker 2:
[126:13] God.

Speaker 1:
[126:15] Man. This does, this set does feel princely, dude. Like these are just, they're just everywhere.

Speaker 2:
[126:23] This card, it gets out of control pretty quickly, because if you can cast one spell and make two, the next spell makes, you know, you get up to four, and obviously so on and so forth. I mean, it is a three mana, three, three ward one haste, which with prowess, so like they, you know, it's not the easiest to get off the board, but untapping with this is not a given. Sometimes you'll cast it, because you're almost never going to go to eight mana and do the whole thing. So you're probably going to just play this on like turn four and hope to untapping turn five, cast a spell.

Speaker 1:
[126:50] Right.

Speaker 2:
[126:50] Which is doable.

Speaker 1:
[126:52] It's also just slams.

Speaker 2:
[126:53] If your plan really relies on that, it becomes better to play the blue, you know, give a creature plus zero plus three hexproof card. That becomes a lot more appealing when you're trying to make your critical creature survive. But yeah, it also just beats down. So I like this more in the aggressive version where you really care about the three, three haste, because in the controlling version of Prismari, which I did have this card and it was kind of mediocre for me, when you don't care about a three, three haste or this card is like, yeah, it's an engine, but it's not the kind of engine you really want to be doing, especially in a deck that doesn't have that many creatures. So once you play this, they're like, oh, cool, a removal target. So I like B plus for Colorspawn Salient.

Speaker 1:
[127:30] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[127:30] Just try to be more aggressive with it. That's a better way to play it, I think.

Speaker 1:
[127:33] I like the idea of just slamming it on three, turning the thing sideways and being like, deal with this. It's pain in the butt to deal with in combat because of the prowess stuff, and Ward 1 is annoying, haste, slams them. Then yeah, if you happen to make a copy of it later, great. But it just seems like a handful. I just put this problem in their court and say, here, I'm going to be doing other stuff while you deal with this. Next is Resonating Loot. This is 2 red, 2 red blue for an artifact at rare. It says, Lance, you control have tap, add 2 mana of any one color. Spend this mana only to cast instant and sorcery spells. And then it has tap, draw a card, activate only if you have 7 or more cards in your hand.

Speaker 2:
[128:22] So it's Manaflare plus Library of Alexandria for you.

Speaker 1:
[128:27] What the hell, this is sweet.

Speaker 2:
[128:30] This is a Builder on Day. This card is actually obscenely good in the right deck. And I actually tweeted out the video where the first time I had this. It was actually a crazy draft because I started like 4-hold, and then took that 4 blue, blue, blue wisdom card in the middle of pack 2 and just completely pivoted. But every game that I played resonating loot, I won in a landslide. Because your lands tap for double mana.

Speaker 1:
[128:55] That's wild.

Speaker 2:
[128:58] Just imagine the base case of like turn 4, you play this and like maybe you're not too far behind. Let's say turn 3, you were interacted, right?

Speaker 1:
[129:04] Right.

Speaker 2:
[129:04] They hit you down to 10, play another creature. Now you want to tap, play your fifth land, and you're like, all right, I'm going to play 10 mana worth of spells and it's going to be great. And it's just not hard to do that. There's tons of hard draw. There's tons of big spells.

Speaker 1:
[129:15] What about the super library of Alexandria part? Do you get it to that point?

Speaker 2:
[129:18] I have used it that way and it's a bit win more. I don't think it would, I think it wouldn't make the card much weaker to not have that part on the card. Like, it's not nothing obviously, but-

Speaker 1:
[129:27] Wow, so it really is just doubling your mana, for instance, in sorceries.

Speaker 2:
[129:31] I mean, to go back to a card which I mentioned earlier, Rapturous Moment, that's the six mana draw three discard two add five mana. Well, if you cast, you tap three lands to cast moment off loot, now you have five mana you can play creatures with.

Speaker 1:
[129:42] That's insane.

Speaker 2:
[129:44] It actually color washes the mana or spell washes the mana.

Speaker 1:
[129:47] And how many X spells have we seen? I mean, there's a bunch of those.

Speaker 2:
[129:50] There's actually a bunch because Quandrix has a bunch in their theme. But I mean, I had this with Traumatic Inspiration, I had this with the Reckoning, the Black White Ultimatum thing. I imagine this plus Math and Magix is going to win you the game every time.

Speaker 1:
[130:04] It also get it into that draw an extra card to turn mode if the cards you draw.

Speaker 2:
[130:08] I just more mean that with double mana, you're just nugging them to make you draw 30 pretty easily. Six lands plus lewd, they die. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[130:16] So what's the downside on it? It's only instances in Sorcery, so it has to be that deck? Okay.

Speaker 2:
[130:22] Like you need, I think, like 15 spells to make this work, and ideally more. But I think that's totally doable, and there's not that many things that kill it, especially in Best of One World.

Speaker 1:
[130:32] Right.

Speaker 2:
[130:33] It will happen sometimes, and it will be annoying, trust me, but...

Speaker 1:
[130:36] Would you first pick it and build around it?

Speaker 2:
[130:39] Yeah. I was super impressed. The card was just awesome. Sometimes you could even go like turn five, play loot, and then cast a two-mana bounce spell off your one remaining land. Because once you're looting, you can throw away cards on bounce spells, and you will still probably win, because there's just so many card draw spells and powerful spells in this format. Leveraging double mana is just crazy. So I like build around A for resonating loot. Every time I've had it so far, it's been the best card in my deck. And yes, you have to build around it, but that's the whole thing. That's the payoff. That's the cool part.

Speaker 1:
[131:09] Right.

Speaker 2:
[131:10] I think this card is actually gonna be a very strong build around. I don't really know how that's gonna translate for like a win rate when we look at 17 lands, because you put this in the wrong deck, it's obviously not very strong.

Speaker 1:
[131:21] Would you put moment of reckoning in that deck?

Speaker 2:
[131:24] Yeah, I already have. It was good.

Speaker 1:
[131:27] Next up is Splatter Technique. It's one blue, blue, red, red for a sorcery at rare.

Speaker 2:
[131:32] I put this in that deck too.

Speaker 1:
[131:35] You can choose one. You can draw four freaking cards, or it deals four damage to each creature and planeswalker. Wow, that's nice. That is sweet. Split card sweeper draw for.

Speaker 2:
[131:48] It's a five minute draw for, or a deal for to everything. What do you need? And usually it's one of those two. There's not that many times when these don't cover a base of some kind.

Speaker 1:
[131:59] That's awesome. Again, the mana cost is the difficult part, right? Double blue, double red, plus one. When you kind of really want that wrath on that turn five, might be a little tricky, but I'm not going to let that stop me from playing this thing. I'll tell you that. What kind of grade would you give it?

Speaker 2:
[132:18] I'm going to give it an A minus.

Speaker 1:
[132:20] A minus? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. This actually allows you to come back.

Speaker 2:
[132:22] I mean, this is just the perfect card for your Prismatic deck, right? Like, yeah, you want both of these abilities pretty badly. And this, this, you know, gives you that option.

Speaker 1:
[132:30] Next up is, well, there's Prismari. Prismari, the inspiration. This costs seven mana. Five blue red for a seven, seven legendary elder dragon at Mythic Rare. It's got flying. So seven mana, seven, seven flying. Ward, pay five life. That's a lot. And then it says, instant and sorcery spells you cast have storm, which I'll read with the reminder text on here. It says, whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, copy it for each spell cast before at this turn, you may choose new targets for the copies. Is that even a thing? Well, it's interesting, but is it good?

Speaker 2:
[133:11] Is it good? I don't know that it's good. I think mostly this is a seven mana, seven, seven flying. And unfortunately for you, the ward is not that good either, just because by the time you cast this, in most of the decks you cast it, they will just pay the five life and kill your thing if they have a way to kill it.

Speaker 1:
[133:30] So you're assuming this is gonna go into the slower Prismari belt, because of the cost.

Speaker 2:
[133:34] I just don't think the Prismari aggro deck is that interested in this now.

Speaker 1:
[133:37] Seven mana. I mean, it's a great finisher. It is seven mana though. And they're playing a bunch of like cantrips and cheap stuff.

Speaker 2:
[133:45] This looks more like a C to me than anything else really. I think maybe it's like a C plus. I don't know. It's a seven mana seven seven that doesn't really protect itself that meaningfully. Yeah, if they're at five, obviously the ward is just straight up untargetable. But most of the time, I just imagine your Prismari control finally gets to seven, plays this against Silver Quill. And if they have a removal spell, which those decks often haven't presented that many targets for, they're gonna kill it. Yes, if you're on top with your seven drop and you have a spell and you can play another spell first, then you can get some storm value. I don't know how often that's gonna come up. So this just doesn't look like a great seven drop to me.

Speaker 1:
[134:21] Yes, it's a lot more.

Speaker 2:
[134:21] I like the next one a lot more.

Speaker 1:
[134:22] A lot to ask to play seven.

Speaker 2:
[134:23] Which is weirdly also blue red.

Speaker 1:
[134:25] Yeah, the next one is, oh yeah, also a seven drop. It's Zephyr and the Tempests, which is five blue red, same cost, for a five seven legendary human bard sorcerer. This one's just a regular rare. It says, once during each of your turns, you may cast an instant or sorcery spell from your hand without paying its mana cost.

Speaker 2:
[134:45] So you play this on seven, you can immediately play a card.

Speaker 1:
[134:48] Oh, dude, that's sweet. So you save your card draw spell or something like that and off you go. Hmm.

Speaker 2:
[134:59] Well, more so than card draw, I would hope is removal, something that affects the board.

Speaker 1:
[135:02] But yes. But you got a five seven here. I mean, that's pretty good. Block with that guy.

Speaker 2:
[135:10] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[135:10] I mean, I want to reload, right? The thing I'm worried about when I resolve this is that I'm at a gas, right? That the ability just doesn't do anything because I've spent all my cards and this is like the last card out of my hand. Right? Where like, if I don't have any more and then I draw one, it's nice to be able to cast it for free. But if I've got seven man, I probably could have just cast the thing anyway, right? Like I don't want to over index for free at that point in the game, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[135:41] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[135:41] But if it's a card draw spell, now all of a sudden I'm cooking with gas, right? Cause I can draw the cards, then spend the mana.

Speaker 2:
[135:47] Or better yet, a card draw spell that also affects the board. So you have like, one of the like bounce draw type deals.

Speaker 1:
[135:53] Or in the way of Luis, a moment of reckoning.

Speaker 2:
[135:57] Look, I think this card is pretty sweet. I have not, I, again, I'm just, I'm generally a little skeptical on seven drops that don't by themselves do a ton.

Speaker 1:
[136:09] Right.

Speaker 2:
[136:09] And like, yes, this has the capacity to be great. If you have like a four or more mana spell in your hand, you play this, you're usually gonna be pretty happy about the outcome, I think. How good is this card? It really varies. Like I would, I think it's like a build around B. Like I would play this in your heavy spell decks. I do think it.

Speaker 1:
[136:27] Yeah, I think so too. I think it's worth it and I like the stats. I like five, seven, like that's tough to kill and tough to get through. It is interesting in that this one looks like it's tailor made for the slower Prismari deck and the Prismari, the inspiration actually looks like it fits better in the cheap, fast, aggressive version, except for that they both cost seven and one of the decks very comfortably can get to seven mana and the other one really doesn't want seven drops at all. So it's like kind of a weird fit. Build around B for Zephyr and the Tempest. Next up is Bletch Loafing Pest. Man, they name these things so great. This is one green black for a three, four legendary creature pest. And this one is a rare. And it has, whenever you gain life, put a plus one plus one counter on each pest you, sorry, each pest, bat, insect, snake and spider you control. Including itself.

Speaker 2:
[137:26] Including itself, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[137:28] Yeah, man. I mean, again, like how many pests can I get? How many incidental life gains can I get? That's the limiting factor. If I can get even a few, this card's just great. It doesn't, it is interesting that it's a pest that doesn't do the pest thing.

Speaker 2:
[137:43] Well, I think that'd be a little too easy for it, but.

Speaker 1:
[137:45] Yeah, yeah, for the way that it's set up here.

Speaker 2:
[137:48] My encounters with this card have led me to believe that it's just very good.

Speaker 1:
[137:51] I believe that.

Speaker 2:
[137:52] And when you attack with a pest, now it's a two-two already.

Speaker 1:
[137:55] Right, it's a two-two and this thing's a four-five.

Speaker 2:
[137:57] Like, let's say in turn two, you play the pest that makes them discard a card, right, the sorcery.

Speaker 1:
[138:01] Right.

Speaker 2:
[138:01] Then you just play this attack, you have a two-two and a four-five already. If they don't have a good blocker, then there's just tons of trouble. But even if they do and they trade, you traded your ravenous rats for their real creature. They discard a card and you go four-five and play. That does threaten to do more things.

Speaker 1:
[138:16] I agree, I like it.

Speaker 2:
[138:17] Let's not even get started if you played the two-two menace uncommon pest that comes back.

Speaker 1:
[138:20] Totally, the rare.

Speaker 2:
[138:22] I like build it on A for black. I just think the Withered Roam Ducks are gonna crush with this card.

Speaker 1:
[138:27] Come on, it's bletch, right? Like blech. Yeah, it's probably that, it's blech. Cauldron of Essence is next. It's same cost, one black, green. This is an artifact at rare and it says, whenever a creature you control dies, each opponent loses one life and you gain one life. And it has one black, green, tap, sacrifice a creature to return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield at sorcery speed. Sweet.

Speaker 2:
[138:59] I mean, there's some, there's some Witherbloom decks that would play this for the static alone of your creatures all drain one when they die and it's recurring nightmare.

Speaker 1:
[139:06] Right.

Speaker 2:
[139:08] I mean, this, this looks really strong to me. It does to me too. This one can go wrong for sure. You can see the ways this fails. You don't have enough creatures. You don't have good creatures in your graveyard. But this plus ETBs plus pest generation, this looks like a build around B, like a really solid engine card for Witherbloom.

Speaker 1:
[139:23] Just you have to have the surveil going and enough creatures to make it work. But then, yeah, that's a real thing. That's sweet card too. Next is Dinah's Guidance, Dinah's Guidance. This is one, same cost again, one black green for an instant at rare. It says, search your library for a creature card, reveal it, put it into your hand or graveyard, and then shuffle. Three mana instant speed. You can dump it in the yard or put it in your hand. Nah. Right? Too expensive.

Speaker 2:
[139:51] I mean, I just don't think you're really gonna, like the fact that it can be in tomb is cool and all, but like, yeah, it's just, this isn't where I want to be.

Speaker 1:
[139:58] No, I would give it an F. I just can't imagine having this much extra mana.

Speaker 2:
[140:00] You just can't spend three mana to do this.

Speaker 1:
[140:03] Next up is Professor Delian Fell. This is two, this is a planeswalker, by the way, two black green for a five loyalty legendary planeswalker Delian at Mythic Rare. This one also has four abilities. The plus two is you gain three life. That's four mana for five loyalty, plus two, you get a four mana for a seven loyalty planeswalker. That is beefy. You can zero it. So again, you still get to stay at five loyalty here to draw a card and lose a life. You can minus three it. And again, you still have two loyalty planeswalker left out for this to destroy target creature. Oh man, this one definitely is hitting that other part of the spectrum that I talked about before. And then it has a ultimate ability of minus six. So very achievable. In fact, next turn and you still get to keep it. So it better not be that good. You get an emblem with, whenever you gain life, target opponent loses that much life. Yeah, that's a cool emblem for something like this. Wow. That is a house. Man, this is one that we, this is exactly the type of card that I was talking about before, where you just get these, you know, usually they cost about five for this, but this one is like four, does all of the stuff I mentioned, and also just has a random plus two, you gain three life tact onto it as well. That is a great card.

Speaker 2:
[141:32] Yeah, this looks awesome. You don't have to be doing anything for it to be good, but it also fits very nicely into what Wither Bloom is doing to begin with. So feels like a dub to me.

Speaker 1:
[141:41] I like, man, I want to give it an A plus just because of how unbelievably good it is on four mana. Card draw engine, removal spell, life gain. It also is a win con. Like you can just go four mana plus it. It's at seven. If it survives on your turn, ultimate it. And then every time you plus it from then on, they're losing three life, you're gaining three life. And it's like, if it survives, you're just going to win the game. I like A plus for Professor Delianfeld. That level of power and flexibility is just absurd for four mana.

Speaker 2:
[142:19] I mean, I would say it's probably like an A, but yeah, it's just, it's awesome either way. Like the fact that the plus two puts it up to seven loyalty means you don't have to minus three to kill their two-two. Like, usually for Planeswalkers, if you played it on, they had one creature, you had nothing, you would fire off the minus three to kill their creature. You don't actually have to do that here.

Speaker 1:
[142:41] No, you can ignore small creatures with this and they can't race you if it's out too, which is another way that people get around Planeswalkers that don't have like that immediate board impact and this just sidesteps that too. That's a nuts card. Next up is Vicious Rivalry. This is the same cost to Green Black for a Sorcery at Rare. It says it's additional cost to cast this spell, pay X life, destroy all artifacts and creatures with mana value X or less.

Speaker 2:
[143:11] Yeah, this time it has those words. I think this card is good. It's basically Toxic Deluge, which we know is a strong card.

Speaker 1:
[143:22] Yeah, I mean, I'm just in.

Speaker 2:
[143:25] You get some optionality as to how that's all going to work. If you were the only one with a four drop, then you can kill everything that costs three or less. It's a wrath that kept your best creature. If they have the most expensive card, then maybe you just kill everything or maybe you keep your five drops better than theirs, and so you want them both to stay in play.

Speaker 1:
[143:44] I'd give Vicious Rivalry an A. The tiebreaker is, yes, it can be difficult to pay life sometimes, but this is in the black green. Wither Bloom gains life, so I would just give it an A.

Speaker 2:
[143:55] Yeah, I like A for Vicious Rivalry. It looks quite strong to me.

Speaker 1:
[143:58] All right, last Wither Bloom card is Wither Bloom, the Balancer. This is eight mana, six black green for a five, five legendary elder dragon at Mythic Rare. It's got affinity for creatures, so it costs one less to cast for each creature you control, so that eight mana is kind of a lie. It has flying. It also has death touch, which yeah, a little superfluous, but sure. And then it says instant and sorcery spells you cast have affinity for creatures. Weird to put that on here, but kind of cool.

Speaker 2:
[144:32] Yeah, so it's kind of like a five mana-ish, five, five flying death touch, and then it makes your spells cheaper as well. I'm just assuming you have like maybe a couple of characters in play.

Speaker 1:
[144:45] Yeah, that's a conservative view of it. If it could cost you three mana or two mana late in the game.

Speaker 2:
[144:51] Yeah, it certainly could.

Speaker 1:
[144:52] Yeah, it does.

Speaker 2:
[144:55] Unfortunately, cards like this do have that thing going on where like games, your games, you're winning, it's better and games you're losing, it's worse. But there are still games where the game's close and casting a four mana, five, five flying is great. So I would lean towards giving this like a B plus.

Speaker 1:
[145:16] It might be an A minus, but it's probably a B plus. Like they actually didn't push these that hard. I mean, they're very good cards. But like if you told me, oh, there's, you know, a cycle cycle of Elder Dragons, one for each of the things, I would just be like, okay, these are going to be like the most nutty, you know, on rate cards we've seen. And they're kind of not, which I appreciate that. By the way, which is where we're at now, by the way, the first card is Aziza Mage Tower Captain. This is red white for a 2-2 legendary Jinn Sorcerer at rare. It says, whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you may tap three untapped creatures you control. If you do copy that spell, you may choose new targets for the copy. It's interesting because I mean, depending on what the spell is, it can work, but I really would lean on instance for this, right? You can keep your creatures up. Tapping out your mana and your creatures on your turn is a little rough unless it's like sorcery, destroy a creature, destroy another creature, then you're probably happy with that. But at any rate, I'm nitpicking, this looks very powerful. That's, doubling your instance in sorceries can add up very, very quickly to give you a huge advantage. I like that.

Speaker 2:
[146:29] Yeah, I mean, it's a really threatening card. Your opponent's going to probably try to kill it if they can. And tapping out on your main phase is fine if you're killing their creatures. I think that the way I would look to play this card mostly is turn five or six, cast this with two creatures in play, immediately cast a spell. They do have a response window, because if you only have three creatures in play in response to the trigger, they kill one of your creatures, you can't tap three creatures. Like you do have to have three untapped creatures in play.

Speaker 1:
[146:59] Oh, there's a trigger that goes up?

Speaker 2:
[147:01] It says, whenever you cast an extra sorcery spell, that triggers. When it resolves, you can choose to tap the creatures and copy the spell. So it's not... There's no way to do it just for free.

Speaker 1:
[147:10] Gotcha. Unless they did it as an additional cost to cast or some weird thing like that. Okay. Yeah, but I mean, I like this card a lot. I'd give Aziza a B+.

Speaker 2:
[147:22] Yeah, I like B+. For Aziza. Like I said, it's a very threatening card. Like there's no...

Speaker 1:
[147:26] Very threatening card.

Speaker 2:
[147:27] There's no, there's no just this sits in play and nothing's going on.

Speaker 1:
[147:30] They finally didn't just add like random haste or something to one of these cards. It's just a two, two for two. Next up is Hardened Academic. This is same cost, red, white for a two, one. There we go, flying in haste. It looks like Aziza lost haste over to the Hardened Academic. It's a bird cleric at rare. It says, has activated ability, discard a card. This creature gains lifelink in Talendive turn, and whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, put a plus one plus one counter on target creature you control.

Speaker 2:
[148:00] God. This isn't one of the classic, oh, they top deck the bomb and I'm gonna lose it, but it's this really efficient beater that has a very strong ability to pump your team and is also just randomly lifelink flying haste. You're just happy to play the card. It always works, and sometimes it works better than others. So I think B plus for Hardened Academic.

Speaker 1:
[148:20] I do too, this is an enabler, a payoff, and all tacked onto an already good creature. That is, you're not getting more than that for two mana. Next is Suspend Aggression. This is one red white for an instant at rare. It says exile target nonland permanent and the top card of your library. For each of those cards, its owner may play it until the end of their next turn. So you're kind of drawing a card and bouncing-ish one of their things.

Speaker 2:
[148:51] Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting take on Repulse, right? That's the two in a blue bounce-tart creature draw a card. The bounce is a little better because they have to play their creature in the next turn window.

Speaker 1:
[149:02] And you can end-step it.

Speaker 2:
[149:03] Yeah. So they have it until the end of their next turn. So they play a three-drop and you end-of-turn suspend aggression. They're kind of forced to play the three-drop on turn four. Whereas a bounce spell, they could just play their four-drop and play the three-drop later. That's better. It's a little worse than drawing a card, of course. But for the same reason, you're forced to play the card at a turn window you don't want. But overall, I think it's a pretty strong card.

Speaker 1:
[149:27] It also just kills tokens, right?

Speaker 2:
[149:30] It also just kills tokens and it kind of effectively draws a card. You can use it on your own stuff if you need to, like in a late game. I would give it a B. It's just a really good interaction spell.

Speaker 1:
[149:39] Really cool design too. Somebody gets props for that one. Next up is Ark of Hunger. This is two red-white for an artifact at rare. Whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard, this artifact deals one damage to each opponent and you gain a life. And then it has tap, mill a card. You may play that card this turn. Whoa! So you get like a kind of a howling mind for yourself and then it just adds this extra little lower hold trigger.

Speaker 2:
[150:08] Yeah, this card's awesome. You don't have to be doing any graveyard stuff for this card to be good. It does pair well with graveyard stuff because it'll trigger, it'll free roll off your other lower hold cards there, but like...

Speaker 1:
[150:19] But you tap, get a land mill, play the land and it drains them for one?

Speaker 2:
[150:24] Yeah. It's a fantastic card.

Speaker 1:
[150:27] What? Okay. And plus in lower hold, tapping the mill a card is beneficial anyway.

Speaker 2:
[150:36] And if you flash back a random card, it just pings them for one.

Speaker 1:
[150:38] It just starts pinging them and stuff. That's awesome. I love that. I would give it a build around grade in addition to the not build around grade, right? Like it does excel in lower hold, but it also meets the power level threshold, I think, without excelling.

Speaker 2:
[151:00] Yeah. My build around grade for this is an A and my not build around grade is also an A. It's just-

Speaker 1:
[151:05] Oh, you think it's just an A straight up. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[151:08] If this card costs black, green, two and you put it in your Witherbloom deck, you would be like, wow, this is one of my best cards.

Speaker 1:
[151:13] It would be, yeah, especially with the life gain on there.

Speaker 2:
[151:15] It just draws two cards a turn and pinks for one a turn, drains for one a turn.

Speaker 1:
[151:18] That's amazing. I'll go A minus on Ark of Hunger. Still forwarding on him. Next is Lorehold the Historian. This is three red, white for a five, five legendary creature elder dragon at mythic. It's got flying and haste. It says each instant and sorcery card in your hand has miracle two, which says you may cast a card for its miracle cost when you draw it if it's the first card you drew this turn. Wow. They actually tacked miracle onto this. That is a heavy load of rules text. It says at the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, you may discard a card if you do draw a card. All right. Well, you weren't kidding, Luis. They pushed the hell out of this one.

Speaker 2:
[152:02] Yeah. Five, five flying haste for five that also lets you rummage on their turn. And if you have mana up on their turn and you draw an instant of sorcery, you get to cast it for two mana, even if it's like a sorcery.

Speaker 1:
[152:15] Well, that's a lot better than the Wither Bloom one. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[152:19] And the miracle text is whatever, because that'll happen sometimes and it'll be good sometimes, but the rummaging text is actually pretty nice too, just getting to toss a land for a card no matter what, if they don't kill it the turn you play it. It's a five mana, five, five flying haste. So I like, I like A for.

Speaker 1:
[152:34] I do too. Yeah. This is also has that classic thing of like all these cool abilities, but your opponent just dies to it before you can do anything with them. And that'll bring us to Quandrix here. Our first card is called Geometer's Arthropod. That is cool artwork. It is blue green for a one four fractal crab. Oh man, this thing's sweet. It's rare. It says whenever you cast a spell with X in its mana cost, look at the top X cards of your library. You may put one of them in your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. We see some of these call outs to the X spells. You know, we've seen some expensive ones at the mythic or at the in blue and green already. And then we have that common one as well. Clearly, a build around.

Speaker 2:
[153:24] Yeah. And I don't think like a...

Speaker 1:
[153:26] How many do you need? Four?

Speaker 2:
[153:28] No, I think like, I think with three, I would play this card and I would consider playing it with two if my curve really wanted to drop.

Speaker 1:
[153:35] You just like the stats enough or?

Speaker 2:
[153:37] Two mana one four is okay. And then when you cast one of those spells, it does draw you a card. In fact, let's do impulse for X. Like that's pretty good.

Speaker 1:
[153:45] It is.

Speaker 2:
[153:46] It's also one of those things that like, I think your opponent's probably going to try to get rid of it, which kind of cuts both ways, where sometimes that's actually good for you because you don't have an X spell. So yes, I would want four, but I would probably play it at three.

Speaker 1:
[153:59] Okay. And then one question that maybe is hard to answer, but would you change, like, let's say you land Geometer's Arthropod, and then the next turn you have an X spell, or maybe the next turn after that, that you'd rather really kind of wait and sink a bunch into, but you could just fire it off and get something from it. Like, would you do that while you have the Arthropod out and just get your card and move on?

Speaker 2:
[154:23] It would kind of depend, but yeah, I mean, the trigger here is worth like, it is a good card. So, I would play it as if that's, that was something I was very interested in doing.

Speaker 1:
[154:35] Okay, so build around B for Geometer's Arthropod?

Speaker 2:
[154:40] I would probably give it a build around B, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[154:41] Okay, next is mind into matter. Here's an X belt, blue, green, X for a sorcery, rare. Draw X cards, then you may put a permanent card with mana value X or less from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. As in a land?

Speaker 2:
[154:57] If you want.

Speaker 1:
[155:00] Kind of do.

Speaker 2:
[155:03] Yeah, I mean, this card is really nice.

Speaker 1:
[155:05] This is a good example. Like if I played Geometer's Arthropod and then next turn, would I just go land mind into matter? Draw a card, probably put a land into play, or I guess maybe a wonder.

Speaker 2:
[155:15] Draw a card, put a land into play, and draw another card.

Speaker 1:
[155:17] And then draw another card.

Speaker 2:
[155:19] That's pretty good. It depends on the rest of your-

Speaker 1:
[155:21] Right, even though normally mind into matter, you'd probably be like, oh, wait till three or four for X and then kind of fire it off. But you know, because you want to just read it.

Speaker 2:
[155:28] It would really depend on the rest of your hand, but yeah, I could totally see that being good.

Speaker 1:
[155:32] That card looks great. I mean, I don't know how many cards like this you get to play, right? Like they, you know, mind over matter, mind into matter, I mean. But I mean, I would look at every card here is just gonna be like my dream card. So I'm probably not, I'm probably not allowed to give these greats to be honest. Like this is, I'm going to lead a bunch of people astray into doing a bunch of nothing. But you know, I love, love, love cards. Like we talked about this on the last set, you know, draw some cards, put something into play. Usually it's a land, but this one even opens up the door more scales well with the game. I mean, I just love cards like this. So I would give mine in a matter, like trying to be responsible. I'd give it like a B or maybe a B plus.

Speaker 2:
[156:16] Yeah. I like B plus for it. I mean, getting to put a card into play is exactly what you want. When you've spent a bunch of man on drawing a card, it being tapped takes away a lot of the value, I would say. Cause you can't use this to put a blocker into play.

Speaker 1:
[156:30] Right. And that does hurt. Next up is applied geometry. This is too blue green for a sorcery at rare. It says create a token that's a copy of target, non or a permanent U-control, except it's a zero zero fractal creature. In addition to its other types, put six plus one plus one counters on it.

Speaker 2:
[156:53] And you can, and you can, if you want, you can just make one of your lands into it. So it's never dead. It's always a six six.

Speaker 1:
[157:00] This is awesome.

Speaker 2:
[157:02] It's a formula of six six that has fractal synergies with your other cards. Cause like that, you know, it's something that comes up, but it doesn't risk your land or anything. Like yes, if they bounce or kill the thing you target, you do lose this, but like nothing's killing or bouncing a land. So the floor on this is four mana six six.

Speaker 1:
[157:21] With minor upside with those synergies you mentioned, but the ceiling is absurd, right?

Speaker 2:
[157:25] But the ceiling is absurd. Cause imagine, I mean, like whatever your best creature is, like, yeah, but without looking at the every everything, copying ETBs, especially with six plus plus one counters can be pretty filthy. Like there, there are some creatures where their ETB when it's bigger is even better though. I don't know. I don't have an example on hand, but even just copy your best creature with six plus plus one counters is zero zero version with six plus, most encounters still really good. It is.

Speaker 1:
[157:52] I mean, if it's a flyer, it's a six six flyer. If it's a trampler, it's six six trampler. Like, yeah, I really like applied geometry. That is just raw rate and a good fail case is, okay, I can just use it on my land then. I'd give it a B plus, I think, for applied geometry.

Speaker 2:
[158:12] That is gonna take over a lot of you.

Speaker 1:
[158:14] Next is Bertha, wise extrapolator. This is two blue green for a one four legendary frog druid. What is this? It's rare. It has increment and whenever one or more plus and plus encounters are put on Bertha, add one mana of any color and then you can pay X and tap it to create a zero zero green and blue fractal creature token and put X plus one plus one counters on it. Two, that is sweet.

Speaker 2:
[158:47] Yeah. I mean, four mana one four increments, not that hard to grow. I do think that adding mana after it gets a counter is probably not an ability that's going to be super exciting. Well, what it does is turn four you cast this, turn five you play a five drop or a two drop because it's got one power. But let's say you tap out for something, it adds a mana then you use the X spell and make a little creature or something. So you can always make a one one.

Speaker 1:
[159:14] But is there also just the use case of play this, untap, play my fifth land, pay X, make a five five?

Speaker 2:
[159:25] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[159:26] And then next turn make a six six and the next, I mean, like how is anybody, like am I missing something here? Like I can just dump mana into this at instance at any time it's not even Sorcery Limited.

Speaker 2:
[159:40] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[159:40] And then it also triggers itself.

Speaker 2:
[159:44] It triggers itself in what way?

Speaker 1:
[159:48] Like if I, if they attack with a two two, I can block with this, whatever. It, it, it, it, the increment does not trigger itself. Okay. Who cares? God, this thing, I, all I'm doing is just dumping man into this, right? Until they kill it.

Speaker 2:
[160:03] It's also not even, yeah. Like it's instant speed is nice too.

Speaker 1:
[160:06] Right. Just block. I mean, I just, this is basically like play it. If it survives, you win.

Speaker 2:
[160:11] I mean, it's one, another one of the many creatures in this set that if you untap with it, things are going to go badly for your opponent.

Speaker 1:
[160:19] I like A for Bertha. I'm a little bit lower on it just because A minus?

Speaker 2:
[160:24] I think there's a lot of games of magic where you could spend your mana to make an XX every turn and lose the game pretty easily. Like that's just, that's not always what's going to work. But I think A minus is fine. I still think it's a good card.

Speaker 1:
[160:36] Man, yeah. A minus is fine by me too. Cause it is just a one for the turn you cast it. But I just don't, yeah, I, I just, it seems like it would be difficult to lose if you, if you're making either four fours or five fives every turn for no, like, and just keeping cards in your hand. Last one is Quandrix, The Proof. This is four blue green for a six six legendary elder dragon. It is mythic rare. It has flying and trample and cascade. When you cast this, exile cards from top of your library until you exile an online card that costs less than this one, you may cast that card without paying its mana cost, put the exile cards on the bottom in a random order. And then it also says, instant and sorcery spells you cast from your hand. Half cascade? Oh my God, that's sweet.

Speaker 2:
[161:22] Yeah, I think Quandrix might be the best card in the set. I don't know. It's pretty close if not.

Speaker 1:
[161:27] Right.

Speaker 2:
[161:28] Six minutes, six six, flying trample, cascade. So you play this.

Speaker 1:
[161:31] That's nuts.

Speaker 2:
[161:32] And immediately get another spell. Like, what are we talking about here?

Speaker 1:
[161:35] I guess the only catch is that this is the thing that wants X spells and cascade is like historically very bad with X spells.

Speaker 2:
[161:45] True. If you cascade into an X spell, it's not really going to do a whole lot.

Speaker 1:
[161:49] But whatever. And you know, this is the interesting, what you said about this maybe being the best, right? Is that when we have so many ultra powerful cards, it often becomes, what do I get now? Like compared to Burda, you don't get much upfront, but it gives you this like place to dump all your mana for the rest of the game. Quandrix is like, you get it all right now. It's like, here you go. Here's six mana plus, you know, up to five mana of other stuff now and on a huge body. I mean, that is awesome. I mean, obviously give it, I actually would give this an A plus. I actually would.

Speaker 2:
[162:24] I think so.

Speaker 1:
[162:25] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[162:25] By itself, it's up to 11 mana worth of spells, maybe average something like nine or 10, right? It hits between a three and a four drop. And if it is a six six flying trample, and if they don't kill it, you can then cast an Instagram sorcery and cascade it.

Speaker 1:
[162:39] Yeah. And the thing I said about X spells is reversed for that last clause. Now all of a sudden, they're great again.

Speaker 2:
[162:44] Right. Right. Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[162:46] A plus for Quandrix, the proof, the truth. Next up is Together as One, which is a six mana sorcery, just six mana. It is rare and it has converged. Target player draws X cards. Together as One deals X damage to any target, and you gain X life, where X is the number of colors of mana spent to cast this spell.

Speaker 2:
[163:10] This is the de-converged payoff. This is the payoff?

Speaker 1:
[163:14] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[163:15] This is the reason you want to play a converged card.

Speaker 1:
[163:17] This is Cruel Ultimatum or something for that deck.

Speaker 2:
[163:19] Yeah. I mean, it basically is, even if you do it for four colors, kill their four, draw four cards, gain four life.

Speaker 1:
[163:25] Yeah. That's nuts.

Speaker 2:
[163:26] Like you're-

Speaker 1:
[163:27] Is that the cutoff? Like is three still okay?

Speaker 2:
[163:32] Three's still very good, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[163:33] It's six mana, but three colors. Two is not enough, right?

Speaker 2:
[163:38] At two, you're probably not getting very much bang for your buck.

Speaker 1:
[163:43] Okay. So three, but four is where it's clearly amazing. Five is of course absurd. Three is still in range. So that's kind of where you want to be. Like if you can do it for three, you would put this card in your deck. And maybe if you have the chance, one splashy duel or whatever gets you to four, then you're happy. If you can consistently do it for four or more, it's just the best card in your deck by a lot. So build around A, right? For together is one.

Speaker 2:
[164:16] Certainly build around A.

Speaker 1:
[164:17] Yeah. Maybe even A+.

Speaker 2:
[164:19] I think it's close to an A+. This is the reason that you build your Converge deck.

Speaker 1:
[164:24] The next is the Dawning Archaic. This costs 10 mana. It's a legendary creature avatar. It's mythic rare. It says it costs one less to cast for each incident sorcery card in your graveyard. It has reach and it's a 7-7. And it says, whenever the Dawning Archaic attacks, you may cast target incident or sorcery card from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. If the spell would be put into your graveyard, exile it instead. Is this just a Prismari payoff? What's the other?

Speaker 2:
[164:51] Yeah, this is a Prismari slash Quandrix. More often Prismari. So if you have five spells, it's a five, five reach for seven. And when it attacks, you probably win the game.

Speaker 1:
[165:01] You mean it's a seven, seven reach for five, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[165:04] Sorry, that's what I meant. I transposed the numbers. So yeah, it just looks like a build around A to me.

Speaker 1:
[165:09] It does to me too.

Speaker 2:
[165:13] This does suffer again from kind of the same thing as Wither Bloom the Dragon, which is the games where your spell deck isn't working, this is gonna be exceptionally bad. But there are games where you cast a bunch of spells, convert that into a win where you got four or five spells in your graveyard, six spells in your graveyard. You can play this and then seven, seven reach is pretty hard to attack past when it attacks. Again, I assume any game where you can attack with this, you're probably in great shape.

Speaker 1:
[165:37] Does it, is the convergence between, is it like between five and six? Like five, you're happy, six is acceptable. Is it six and seven? Like would you pay seven in mana?

Speaker 2:
[165:47] Five and six, I think.

Speaker 1:
[165:48] Five and six, yeah. Cause you wouldn't pay seven for this, but you wouldn't pay eight.

Speaker 2:
[165:52] Yeah, but also if you have seven lands in play and you only have three spells in your graveyard, like either you didn't put this in a deck that's great at doing it or you had a pretty bad draw. It's just really hard. Every turn that goes by, like you presumably are putting spells in the graveyard.

Speaker 1:
[166:04] Right. And I'm curious to see how that deck plays out because a lot of the times when you're playing a bunch of cantrips, you end up with more lands. You don't miss land drops. In fact, you're looking for ways to use them for other things, but some of those builds can discard them or loot them away or whatever. And this one actually could take advantage of having a few extra lands laying around, because you may have to pay six or seven mana rather than the hopeful five or even four. There is a cycle of what are these dual lands, one for each of the schools. I'll do Shattered Sanctum as our example. It's a land rare. It enters tapped unless you control two or more other lands, and it has tap for white or black, and then there's one for each of the highlighted color pairs.

Speaker 2:
[166:49] Yeah, these are just good lands if you're playing-

Speaker 1:
[166:51] C minuses or something?

Speaker 2:
[166:53] Like C pluses.

Speaker 1:
[166:54] Cs, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[166:56] I mean, they're just untapped duels for the most part. That's pretty strong.

Speaker 1:
[166:59] Okay. So C, C plus for that cycle. And then there is Great Hall of the Biblioplex, which is a land at rare that taps for colorless, or you can tap it and pay one life to add one mana of any color, but you can only spend that mana to cast instance or sorcery spells. Or you can pay five mana, and it says, if this land isn't a creature, it becomes a 2, 4 wizard creature with, whenever you cast an instance or sorcery spell, this creature gets plus one, plus so until end of turn, it's still a land. Meh, I don't know. I do like lands that become creatures, but this set just seems so stacked that it would be hard to imagine being like, all right, here's the big turn, I'm going to put my five mana into turning this land into a 2, 4 with marginal upside. I'm a little sceptical.

Speaker 2:
[167:51] Yeah, I do like that you only have to activate it once.

Speaker 1:
[167:54] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[167:56] That makes it a lot better.

Speaker 1:
[167:57] Lot better.

Speaker 2:
[167:58] I think because of that, I would typically just play this card in my deck if you could afford a colorless land. Even without any spell stuff going on, a colorless land that you just activate once and is now a 2, 3, 4, that's kind of good value.

Speaker 1:
[168:13] I just am looking at the other cards, the Uncommon, the Rares, the Mythic Rares and just going like, man, is this, yeah, I don't know, I'm skeptical. I just feel slow for what this set's doing. Even if it's, like you said, good value. I would start this off at a D plus, and I know that's a little harsh for what is a pretty good land, but I'm going to need to see if people beat me with this thing a few times before I'm like, all right, fine. The other thing is, like, I hate putting colorless lands in my deck. Like, I'd want to have this in Prismari, where at least I can use the, maybe occasionally pay one life to, you know, make casting one of my spells a little easier. Last one is Petrified Hamlet, or actually, what do you want to give the great hall? I was a little harsh on it.

Speaker 2:
[169:01] Probably get like a C.

Speaker 1:
[169:02] C, yeah, okay, we're pretty close. Last one is Petrified Hamlet. This is a land at rare. When it enters, you choose a land card name. Activated abilities of sources with the chosen name can't be activated unless they're mana abilities. And lands with the chosen name have tap, add colorless, and this has tap, add colorless. That's a cute design, but no.

Speaker 2:
[169:25] No, this looks like an F. I don't think.

Speaker 1:
[169:28] Okay, so that's it for the bulk of the main set. We do have two other things. What is this called, the main extra sheet?

Speaker 2:
[169:39] There is the mystical archive, and then there's the special guests.

Speaker 1:
[169:41] Yes, so we're going to do the mystical archive first. Now we are going to handle this slightly differently. There are many cards that just don't apply to Limited. They're cool, they're neat, but we're not going to spend a lot of time going over them because they're ignorable, and we will stop on the ones that you actually need to pay attention to when you happen to open them in a pack. So with that, our first card up is Akroma's Will, three and a white instant. These do technically have different rarities, but they just appear in that slot at the same frequency, so I don't think they really matter for us, so I'm not going to read them. Three and a white instant, choose one. If you control a commander as you cast a spell, you may choose both instead. Creatures you control gain flying, vigilance, and double strike until end of turn. And then for us, or creatures you control gain lifelink, indestructible, and protection from each color until end of turn. I mean, this card does just end the game, right? That first mode.

Speaker 2:
[170:37] This card is just, I mean, we've just completely- We just saw this a second ago in Final Fantasy. Right. It's so dumb. If you have three creatures in play, you win the game.

Speaker 1:
[170:45] Right.

Speaker 2:
[170:45] And sometimes if you have two, you still win the game. Both modes, like the first mode does tons of damage by double striking and giving it flying, and also has vigilance. So it's like, if you don't win on that hit, you're still probably okay. The second mode, nothing they can do is they can block because of protection of each color and it's lifelink. So again, you're probably not getting attacked back. Plus the second mode has indestructible. So you could even use this on block. So I like A for a card as well. It's just a messed up card.

Speaker 1:
[171:10] It proved itself. Just raw power levels and sanity. Next is Angel's Grace, white instant split second. And you can't lose the game this turn. Your opponents can't win the game this turn. It's only enough turn damage. We'd reduce your life total to one, reduces it to one, or less than one reduces it to one and said, no, right?

Speaker 2:
[171:28] No, I think this card very rarely is gonna take a loss and turn it into a win.

Speaker 1:
[171:32] That's right. Next up is Armageddon, three and a white sorcery destroy all lands. It used to be good in cube in those certain types of decks.

Speaker 2:
[171:42] Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:
[171:44] Could you build a deck like that here? You're on the play, you curve out, blah, blah, blah. It's just such a liability when you can't cast it, when you're behind.

Speaker 2:
[171:52] Yeah, I think that basically the way I would look at Armageddon is like, if you cast this and you have a board advantage, you probably win. If it's parity, then who knows? It's probably not great for you. And if you're losing, then you just lose. So obviously you can't cast it there. I think that I would probably main deck this in aggressive decks. And the reason is, you will play against some amount of Converge or Prismaria or Quantrix decks that are going to tap out for some piece of card draw, and you're just going to cast Armageddon. They're going to lose.

Speaker 1:
[172:23] Total, and you have a 2-2 and a 1-1, and you're just going to win the game. I would play it too. It also does tend to benefit you. You know, your curve should be lower than your opponents on average. So like that helps bend it up. But you are taking on a big risk. Like the games where you're not on the play and you're a couple of your creature behind, it's just dead. It just doesn't do anything. And it probably won't at any point in the game. So what do you want to give Armageddon? I would snap it off if I see it like it's so sweet and try to get people with Armageddon, but. It does not seem that good on average to me.

Speaker 2:
[173:01] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[173:02] I'd give it like a build around B. I would try to build a low curve, heavy white deck.

Speaker 2:
[173:06] That's about right, I think.

Speaker 1:
[173:07] Yeah. But I mean, the times when it's bad, it's just literally terrible. Next is Duty Beyond Death. One on a white for an instant is additional cost. It casts a spell, sac or creature. Creatures you control gain indestructible until the turn. Put a plus one plus one counter on each creature you control. Which was green or black?

Speaker 2:
[173:25] Yeah, I think that this one's pretty bad.

Speaker 1:
[173:28] Seems bad.

Speaker 2:
[173:29] We saw this in Tarkier Dragonstorm and I don't think it was good. So I just give this an F. Just too situational.

Speaker 1:
[173:35] Right, and having to sac a creature to pump your creatures is just, it goes against itself. Next is Helping Hand, white for a sorcery. Return to our creature card with mana value three or less from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. I could see Lorhold wanting that.

Speaker 2:
[173:51] I've actually been kind of impressed with this card if you just have a bunch of good threes. Like, it will do the thing you want, so.

Speaker 1:
[173:58] We saw a lot of rare threes that were good, too. I would give this like a C plus for Helping Hand. Like, I'm not excited about it, but I think, yeah, I would be open to running one of these.

Speaker 2:
[174:09] Yeah, I like C plus for it. The fact that it's tapped again really does. That does actually matter.

Speaker 1:
[174:15] Hop to it. Two and a white for a sorcery. Create three one, one white rabbit creature tokens. It does feel like we saw quite a bit of mass pump here in this set. Like, I wonder if just having three tokens like this is worth it. I mean, it's already okay, right?

Speaker 2:
[174:32] Yeah. At baseline, it's, I think, a totally fine card.

Speaker 1:
[174:36] Yeah. C plus?

Speaker 2:
[174:41] I would do C plus on Hop to it. If you can find good ways to make it even better, if you can find like mass pump or ways to sacrifice tokens or whatever, which there are some amount of kinds of stuff like that in the set, then I think that Hop to it is going to be pretty good. But it starts out reasonably high, I think.

Speaker 1:
[175:02] Yeah. C plus-ish. Next is Prismatic Ending. It literally has converged on it, so you know it's got something going. It's white, X for sorcery, exile target, nonland permanent. If it's mana value is less than or equal to the number of colors of mana spent to cast this spell. Great card. Love it for Converge. The question is, would you play it in like lower hold? Like if you're exiling two mana things for two mana.

Speaker 2:
[175:24] You should always just play this card. It's just really, really strong.

Speaker 1:
[175:26] I really like it too. I'd give it a B.

Speaker 2:
[175:30] Yeah. I like B for Prismatic Ending. I have just been very impressed with it.

Speaker 1:
[175:34] And it really does scale well with Converge decks. It's very, very good there.

Speaker 2:
[175:39] Yeah. I mean, it's just also efficient. You spend one mana to kill one drop, two to kill a two drop. And if you have more colors, three to kill a three drop and so forth. But even in just a two color deck, I think this is going to work fairly well a lot of the time.

Speaker 1:
[175:51] Repel Calamity is one in a white, instant destroy target creature with power or toughness, four or greater. Yeah. I'm in.

Speaker 2:
[175:59] Yeah. This is a great removal spell.

Speaker 1:
[176:01] Definitely.

Speaker 2:
[176:01] Even more than just being in. I think this card is actually fantastic. Like a B. I think if it would be plus, it's an instant speedway to kill pretty much anything you really care about.

Speaker 1:
[176:12] Like the big stuff.

Speaker 2:
[176:13] The fact that it's power or toughness means like, it's just not missing that often. Like, yeah. It's at its worst against a 3-3, but anything better than that, you know.

Speaker 1:
[176:22] Right. And we often talk about how you get ahead in a limited game a lot of the times is by using a removal spell that costs less than the thing that it targets. And this basically has to, yeah. So BB plus for Repel Calamity. Next is Reprieve. This is one in a white instant return target spell to its owner's hand draw card.

Speaker 2:
[176:40] Fantastic card.

Speaker 1:
[176:41] Another great card.

Speaker 2:
[176:42] Going back to spending more mana, Reprieve, I think just does exactly what you want, which is you spend two mana, they spend four and you call it a day. You get to draw your card.

Speaker 1:
[176:52] So I like B for Reprieve.

Speaker 2:
[176:54] Yeah. I'd give it a B. It's just a good way to get a tempo advantage.

Speaker 1:
[176:57] Lots of X spells and a lots of expensive stuff in this set. Next is Requisition Raid. It's white for a sorcery. It has Spree. You can choose one or more additional costs. You can add a mana. And in fact, it's actually one mana for each of these. So it's destroy target artifact, destroy target enchantment, or put a plus and plus one counter on each creature target player controls.

Speaker 2:
[177:18] Plus one plus one counterpart is obviously like the most important part.

Speaker 1:
[177:22] Two mana, in that case, it's kind of... Yeah, two mana sorcery, put a plus and plus, like for that example. But if you add a mana, you can hit an enchantment or add another mana to hit an artifact.

Speaker 2:
[177:30] Yeah. This looks like a sideboard. It's like a sideboard.

Speaker 1:
[177:33] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[177:33] Probably like B, because it's a... Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[177:36] We saw a lot of rares that this hits that are nice.

Speaker 2:
[177:39] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[177:40] Next is return to the ranks. This is white, white X for a sorcery. It's got convoke and it says, return X target creature cards with mana value two or less from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Speaker 2:
[177:53] I just... This is similar to the black white spell, which is like, yes, you could make a deck where this works, but most of the time you're just not going to want to do that at all.

Speaker 1:
[178:02] I mean, I guess it gets a build around C or something, but really it's just an F. Next is Winds of Abandon, one on a white sorcery, exile target creature you don't control for each creature, exile this way, it's controller Sutcliffe's library for a basic land card, puts it on the battlefield, taps and shuffles. But here's the thing, this thing has overload for four white white, which means instead of target creature, it's each creature your opponents control. You can literally kill every creature on your opponent's board for six mana. Now they do get a land tapped per, but game over.

Speaker 2:
[178:35] They're dead.

Speaker 1:
[178:35] Yeah. I love this card. I mean, this card's in the cube. Like it's, it's legit.

Speaker 2:
[178:40] Like, yeah, I remember playing with this in a MH one. I think it was.

Speaker 1:
[178:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[178:44] I mean, give it an A. I, my only question is, is it an A plus? It's six mana.

Speaker 1:
[178:50] Sure, I'll give it an A plus.

Speaker 2:
[178:52] Like, and it's also two mana to kill your dragon on turn five. If you need to do that, you know, that also works. So I would say that your goal is to cast this on six mana.

Speaker 1:
[179:00] Right, that is the goal. Yes, but the fallback clan is nice.

Speaker 2:
[179:04] Put creatures in your deck. You know, you just put creatures in your deck, you're gonna, you're gonna do fine.

Speaker 1:
[179:08] Yep. So A plus for winds of abandon. Wow, the white cards are actually really good. Next up is Brain Freeze. One in a white instant target player mills three cards with storm.

Speaker 2:
[179:18] So this is an interesting one.

Speaker 1:
[179:20] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[179:20] I don't think it's good. Like, I think it's closer to an F than any other rating, but boy, can you imagine what this would do in like the Prismari Mirror?

Speaker 1:
[179:29] I can.

Speaker 2:
[179:30] It is actually a legit threat. I tried this one deck and it wasn't very good. So far, I'm pretty low on it. I think this is more for me a sideboard card. If I saw a brain freeze, I would spec on it. And if I play at any blue mirror, I'm bored in brain freeze. And I'm just on turn seven or eight, either piggybacking off their two spells by casting an instant and then brain freezing for 12, or trying to find a way to just bring this back from my graveyard and do it twice.

Speaker 1:
[179:56] I love it. It's really cool. But yes, if you treat it as an F, you'd probably be best off over the course of the set. This next card's really good too. Man, they actually aren't messing around with these. Cyclonic Rift, one in a blue instant, return target non-land permanent, you don't control to its owner's hand. But this one also has overload, so for six in a blue, you can return each non-land permanent, you don't control to its owner's hand. Bounce your opponent's everything.

Speaker 2:
[180:22] Yeah, it is a much worse winds of abandon, I'll say, because they can just untap and replay their creatures. But still definitely has some really high moments. So I would give Cyclonic Rift a B, I think.

Speaker 1:
[180:35] Yeah, I would go probably B plus. I mean, the top end is really, really nice. Next is Days, one in a white instant, counter-target spell unless this controller pays one, but it has an alternate casting cost of returning an island you control to its owner's hand.

Speaker 2:
[180:51] Yeah, Days is a fun one.

Speaker 1:
[180:52] Days in regular, limited, come on, leave me alone.

Speaker 2:
[180:55] We saw it once in Amonkhet, but yeah, I mean, Days I actually think is a really strong card.

Speaker 1:
[181:01] It is.

Speaker 2:
[181:02] It becomes dead at some point in the game, for the most part, though you never know every now and then, you get a cheeky Days on turn 10 or whatever. But if you just on, like the sweet spot is turn three or four, like you're Prismari Agro, you go two drop, they play two drop, you go three drop, and you Days their three drop and untappably another three drop, like you're in a really good shape.

Speaker 1:
[181:23] You are, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[181:24] You want to be a heavy blue deck and you want to be assertive, I think. Days in a controlling deck is not as good, but I would give it a B.

Speaker 1:
[181:31] I would too.

Speaker 2:
[181:33] The times when it doesn't work are real, but oh man, this card is good when it works.

Speaker 1:
[181:36] And this also does seem like a good environment for it with the X spells out of Quandrix plus the generally just expensive rares and stuff.

Speaker 2:
[181:42] Yeah. Yeah. I have to think about Days when I'm casting my X spells. Seriously.

Speaker 1:
[181:47] I'm just going to refuse to. Next up is deduce, which is one in a blue instant. Draw a card and investigate, which is create a clue token. So you get two cards, but one of them right now, one of them a little later. Sure.

Speaker 2:
[182:00] Yeah. I mean, I think it's a C, but you'll play it in your spells decks for sure.

Speaker 1:
[182:04] Here's another one that fits that bill, disdainful stroke, one in a blue instant counter target spell with mana value four or greater. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[182:12] Yeah. I like disdainful stroke a lot.

Speaker 1:
[182:13] I'm main decking that all day in this format.

Speaker 2:
[182:16] Yeah. I'm happy to play disdainful stroke.

Speaker 1:
[182:17] I would give it a C plus or I don't think I have it in the B range.

Speaker 2:
[182:21] The first three turns of the game, you know it's doing nothing, which is definitely something to keep in mind. But past that, it becomes pretty live and can be really, really effective. So, I like C plus.

Speaker 1:
[182:33] Yeah. Flusterstorm is next. It's blue, instant, counter-target, instant or sorcery, unless its controller pays one and it has storm.

Speaker 2:
[182:42] I think this is a at best sideboard card. I would probably give it an F. It just misses on too much stuff.

Speaker 1:
[182:49] Yeah. Even if we're indexing for the X spells a little bit more, you don't over-index and this would be way over-indexing. Next up is Force of Will. You may have heard of it. Three blue blue instant counter-target spell or you can pay one life in exile blue card from your hand instead of paying its mana cost.

Speaker 2:
[183:09] I'm kind of curious how good this card is. We're not going to find out too much because it's a mythic on the bonus sheet. We're just not going to see it that much. But I think the heavy blue decks would play this card.

Speaker 1:
[183:20] You think so?

Speaker 2:
[183:22] Look, being down a card isn't great, but Limited is more like cube than it used to be where the four drops hit really hard. The five drops hit really hard. If you have a good curve in draw this plus a blue card and you force their five drop, I do think that's going to be a pretty strong maneuver. Does that make this a good card? I don't know. I'm pretty confused on how good force is. If you have a lot of card draw though, you would trade a card and a life to make it so that their five mana play just doesn't hit the board ever.

Speaker 1:
[183:52] I would just start off low on it. My guess is that if you ran a study on number of games where people actually like alternate cast force of will, they probably put themselves at a disadvantage. It really depends on what you have to go with. It may negatively affect your win rate. Or it might be close. And then a five mana hard counter is a nice backup plan, but it's not very desirable.

Speaker 2:
[184:15] Yeah. I think it's probably a C level card.

Speaker 1:
[184:18] Yeah, I'd give it a D. Yeah, it's right at that range.

Speaker 2:
[184:20] But I also think it's gonna be a D in most decks and maybe a C plus in the right deck, really heavy blue, lots of card draw.

Speaker 1:
[184:26] I mean, there's sideboard where I'd want to bring it in 100% of the time.

Speaker 2:
[184:29] Definitely, yeah. You play against someone who wants to resolve a seven drop, for some reason, it starts becoming a lot more interesting.

Speaker 1:
[184:35] Very nice, yeah. Pongify is next. Blue, instant, destroy a target creature. It can't be regenerated, remember that. And his controller creates a 3-3 green ape creature token. You know, they've consistently lowered what you get on the other end of these cards. And this one was still when they thought they needed to give you a freaking 3-3, like you're upgrading some of your opponents.

Speaker 2:
[184:58] For Pongify, let's not do that.

Speaker 1:
[185:01] Next is one of my, probably my favorite, just straight card draw spell of all time. Preordain, blue, sorcery, scry 2 draw card.

Speaker 2:
[185:08] Yeah, great card.

Speaker 1:
[185:09] Love it.

Speaker 2:
[185:09] Give it a C plus probably.

Speaker 1:
[185:10] Give it a C plus, yeah, cause it fits into those decks really well. Next is slide of hand. Sounds like kind of a worse version. This is blue, sorcery, look at the top two cards of your library, put one of them in your hand and the other on the bottom of your library.

Speaker 2:
[185:24] It's, I mean, it's a C also, like it's slightly, maybe C plus, cause like getting to fill your graveyard with a spell on turn one and make it so your draws a little smoother is really nice. Yeah, it's nice.

Speaker 1:
[185:37] And there's decks that want that here.

Speaker 2:
[185:38] Yeah, C plus for slide of hand. Next one we've got, I think a pretty tricky one, spell pierce. It's a blue counter target, non-creature spell, unless the controller pays two. I think your first inclination is like, this is a bad sideboard card. I got spell pierced and I've spell pierced other people in this format and it felt plausible. I'm not willing to say it's good yet, but there's a lot of non-creature spells. Getting to snap off a spell pierce on something is really strong.

Speaker 1:
[186:13] Yeah, and the X spell thing we keep talking about, it's a slight bump too. What would you give it?

Speaker 2:
[186:18] Probably like a C.

Speaker 1:
[186:19] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[186:20] Not a card I'm really excited about, but I think it is actually a fine card.

Speaker 1:
[186:26] Next up is Stalka. Man, they really did go hard here. Two and a blue sorcery. Look at the top five cards of your library, put two of them in your hand and the rest in the bottom in any order. Great card. Especially in Limited, where you're seeing such a big chunk of your deck.

Speaker 2:
[186:39] I would give it a B+.

Speaker 1:
[186:40] Yeah. It's one of the best card draw spells.

Speaker 2:
[186:43] It's not just card draw. This is a lot closer to tutoring than card draw. You're not looking through your whole deck, but casting dig through time. Look at top five and putting two in your hand. The turn after you cast stock up is usually going to be a pretty good turn.

Speaker 1:
[186:57] Yeah, totally. Yeah. It feels really bad to be on the other end of it. And that's a good thing for it. Next up is Ad Nauseam. Three black black for an instant. Reveal the top card of your library and put that card into your hand. You lose life equal to its mana value. You may repeat this process any number of times.

Speaker 2:
[187:18] It's a five mana draw spell that also kills you. So yeah, let's not do that.

Speaker 1:
[187:21] So no. Next is Bitter Triumph. One and a black for an instant is the additional cost to cast this spell. You can discard a card or pay three life and it destroys a creature or planeswalker.

Speaker 2:
[187:30] Great card. I would give Bitter Triumph a B.

Speaker 1:
[187:33] A B. Super efficient removal. And every once in a while the discard is actually good for you. Next up is Culling the Weak. It's black for an instant is additional cost to cast this spell, sac a creature, and you add four black mana.

Speaker 2:
[187:46] Just an F. Don't put this card in your deck.

Speaker 1:
[187:48] Next is Dismember. This is also on the short list of best removal spells of all time. This is one and two Phyrexian black mana, meaning you can either play a black mana or two life in that spot. And it's an instant that gives target creature minus five, minus five until end of turn.

Speaker 2:
[188:06] I mean, if you factor in the draft portion where you can third pick Dismember and just know you're 100% to be able to play it, I would just give a Dismember an A.

Speaker 1:
[188:14] I agree.

Speaker 2:
[188:15] It's a colorless removal spell. It's a little better in black because not having to pay life is actually pretty nice, but I'm still not really that concerned. I'm just gonna put this card in every deck and it's gonna be awesome. So A for Dismember, really good card.

Speaker 1:
[188:29] Next up is Feed the Swarm. This is one and a black for a sorcery, and to start a charred creature or enchantment, an opponent controls you lose life equal to that permanence mana value.

Speaker 2:
[188:39] Yeah, I mean, this one's a totally playable card.

Speaker 1:
[188:42] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[188:42] And you're not really worried about getting multiples because it's on the bonus sheet, so it's not that likely that you will.

Speaker 1:
[188:47] Right.

Speaker 2:
[188:48] I would probably give Feed the Swarm like a C+. The first one's fine.

Speaker 1:
[188:51] The first one's fine. And this is not a set that super cares about enchantment, so you're not getting a super bonus on that, but nice to have. Next is Living End. This is a sorcery that doesn't actually have a cost, a traditional mana cost. It has suspend three for two black black. So you pay two black black, and then it gets suspended for three. And after the counters come off, you get to cast it. And it says, each player exiles all creature cards from their graveyard, then sacrifices all creatures they control, then puts all cards they exiled this way onto the battlefield. It flops your graveyard, or everybody's graveyard for their battlefield.

Speaker 2:
[189:25] The thing is, the effect here is symmetrical, and there's three turns face up before it happens. You can't even set it up.

Speaker 1:
[189:31] No, I would give it an F. I just don't think you could make this work. It's powerful and cool.

Speaker 2:
[189:36] No shot, no shot.

Speaker 1:
[189:36] Yeah, the thing you're trying to do is dump a bunch of cards into your graveyard so that you get a whole bunch and your opponent loses their stuff. But like you said, difficult to pull off. Next is Locust Spray. This is black for an instant. Tar creature gets minus one, minus one in Talon of Turn. It also has Cycling for black. So you can just play black to discard it and draw a card.

Speaker 2:
[189:58] I think this card, I mean, the Cycling makes this card totally fine. Like it's like a C plus. You're just, it triggers Repartee. It's just one mana spell that if you don't, if it's not good, you cycle it.

Speaker 1:
[190:07] Yeah, totally fine. Next is Shieldred's Edict. This is one and a black for an instant. Choose one. Each opponent sacrifices a non-token creature of their choice, or each opponent sacrifices a creature token of their choice, or each opponent sacrifices a planeswalker of their choice. An elegant Edict, it gets around the common issue, right, of, well, they've got some one-one token and I want to hit their actual thing. It does bump it up into playable. I wouldn't say it bumps it up into great, but I would give Shieldred's Edict like a C. Like I think you can put one of these in your deck.

Speaker 2:
[190:42] I like C. It's funny because this is one of those cards that's so good and constructed in cube that you would probably think it's better than it is, but it's still just an edict. The killing of Planeswalker will matter sometimes in this format. There are Planeswalkers, but not that often. You're usually not going to make them sac a token, though I guess maybe a big fractal, and they're mostly going to have two creatures or three creatures out when you cast this. So yeah, it's fine, but it's nothing special.

Speaker 1:
[191:04] Right, next is Smallpox, Black Black for a sorcery. Each player loses one life, discards a card, sacrifices a creature of their choice, and sacrifices the land of their choice.

Speaker 2:
[191:14] Yep, nope, that's an F.

Speaker 1:
[191:15] That's an F. Next up is Stargaze, Black Black, X for a sorcery. Look at twice X cards from the top of your library, put X cards from among them into your hand, and the rest into your graveyard. Great deal, you lose X life.

Speaker 2:
[191:29] The losing X part is really tough to get around because even if you're a black deck that like, I could use a five or six mana card draw spell, losing a bunch of life while also spending a bunch of mana to not affect the board, but this card, we've seen this before, didn't work out great. So I would say it's like a D.

Speaker 1:
[191:46] I would too. I would start by not playing it. It can have a narrow use, but it's generally not very good. Next up is Vamp, Vampiric Tutor. This is black for an instant searcher library for a card, then shuffle and put that card on top of your library, not into your hand, and then you lose two life. Is there anything, like, is there any use case for this in Limited, where it would actually be worth that? If you had one of the big bombs, is it still?

Speaker 2:
[192:13] I would want at least one incredibly good card that's better than, like, most of, most of both my cards and my opponent's cards, like, you know, like, not even, like, one of the dragons, like something even better.

Speaker 1:
[192:24] No, it has to be better than that. It has to be something that is castable and gets you significantly ahead in the game.

Speaker 2:
[192:31] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[192:32] Or recoups this card back or something.

Speaker 2:
[192:35] And so if you had, like, a mythic bomb and you had, like, the black green wrath.

Speaker 1:
[192:40] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[192:42] I could see, like, vamps starting. But the problem is being down a card and two life is just really big. Most cards are not worth that. I would not be playing vamp. So I think it's like an F, but I could construct a use case for it and maybe it would be good in decks like that. But yeah, for the most part, that's not what you want.

Speaker 1:
[192:57] Zombify is three and a black for a sorcery return chart creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Speaker 2:
[193:03] Yeah, I mean, it's playable. Not very good.

Speaker 1:
[193:06] I'll just give it a D, yeah. Then we got some red cards here. A Braid, this is a nice one. One and a red instant. Choose one that does three damage to a creature or destroys an artifact.

Speaker 2:
[193:17] It's a B, just two mana, instant speed, kill most of the creatures you care about. And every now and then, you'll pop a loot or something like that. And you're gonna crush the dreams of someone.

Speaker 1:
[193:27] Totally, next is Big Score. This is the three and a red instant is additional cost to cast it. Discard a card, but you get two cards and two treasure tokens. You get a lot back for it. And this is the type of card that can really pop off in those Prismari decks. This lets you double spell very easily.

Speaker 2:
[193:44] Or set up one of those six, seven drop plays, right?

Speaker 1:
[193:47] Right.

Speaker 2:
[193:49] I think Big Score looks like a C. You'll play it in your big spell decks. It's a little awkward, because Opus triggers on five mana, so a four mana spell is not the best for that, but I mean, that's fine.

Speaker 1:
[194:00] It's fine still. Next is Brotherhood's End. This is one red, red for a sorcery. Choose one, it does three damage to each creature in each planeswalker, or destroy all artifacts with mana value three or less. Do you want three mana deal, three damage to each creature? Like that is packing a punch.

Speaker 2:
[194:19] It just feels like a sideboard. Especially in red already, like, you know, you're probably not putting this in lore hold. I think it's probably like a sideboard card. It doesn't look great for main deck use.

Speaker 1:
[194:30] That's what I think too.

Speaker 2:
[194:31] Maybe a Prismari deck will just play it and not play creatures, and it'll be good. Might be like a B in that deck.

Speaker 1:
[194:36] Yeah, that's true. And it solves the most common problem they have, which is like falling behind on board early in the game.

Speaker 2:
[194:44] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[194:44] I could see that. Build around B or sideboard. Next up is Bulk Up, one in a red for an instant destroy, or excuse me, double target creature's power until end of turn, and it has flashback for four red-red. I'm all for that one. Next one is great though, Burst Lightning. It's an instant for red. It says does two damage to any target and it has a kicker cost of four. You can add four mana to it and then it does four damage instead. That's one of the best, that ended up being one of the best burn spells ever, right?

Speaker 2:
[195:15] Yeah, because for one mana, you kill small things. And then for five mana, you can kill bigger things and it goes face, which is really big.

Speaker 1:
[195:20] That's the big deal.

Speaker 2:
[195:21] So I like B for Burst Lightning, honestly.

Speaker 1:
[195:23] I do too.

Speaker 2:
[195:25] We didn't know how good we had it in Zendikar when it was released. It's a really awesome card.

Speaker 1:
[195:29] This is one of the few cards that's actually challenged Lightning Bolt. There are situations where this is better than Lightning Bolt, and that's very, very hard to do. They set that bar really high. Next up is Crackle with Power. This one is kind of insanity. So it's red, red, and then X, X, X, triple sorcery. It does five times X damage to each of up to X targets.

Speaker 2:
[196:01] So for five mana, or six mana rather, no, five mana, it deals five to three targets. That's awesome. Red, red, three, kill three creatures, or kill two creatures and you take five, because it can hit players.

Speaker 1:
[196:14] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[196:15] Really, really good.

Speaker 1:
[196:16] Like off the charts, good. And then, of course, if you get up to that's, that's five damage to one target, right? No, or sorry, yes, sorry, if we're talking about five man.

Speaker 2:
[196:28] Yeah, the triple X confused me. Five damage for one mana. So eight mana is the is the is the place where you want to do this. And that now it's dealing ten damage to two targets.

Speaker 1:
[196:41] Yep, for eight mana.

Speaker 2:
[196:46] I mean, and for 11 mana, you're dealing 15 damage to three targets.

Speaker 1:
[196:52] And I can pick one of them for you. This card is a legitimate, it looks ridiculous because of the mana cost and because it's like literally in the all time hall of fame for I have to read this card every time it's cast against me.

Speaker 2:
[197:05] But we just got confused again.

Speaker 1:
[197:08] It is the goat of that potentially. But it is actually a very powerful game ender if your deck is capable of producing a bunch of mana and it's good enough even if it can't.

Speaker 2:
[197:19] Finally, a finisher for Prismari.

Speaker 1:
[197:21] Yeah, I was gonna say it does fit right in there, but it does feel like they've already got that grace covered.

Speaker 2:
[197:26] I'd give it to Luke to tell you that much.

Speaker 1:
[197:27] Yeah, I'd give it, yo, totally. I'd give it, I'd still give it like a B. Like I think it's a great, maybe even a B plus. Like it is still mana intensive if you do cast it for one, it's still just fine.

Speaker 2:
[197:38] I mean, the payoff is eight mana. It's playable at five mana, but not exciting. And then at eight mana, you're looking to end the game. So yeah, that sounds like a B plus to me.

Speaker 1:
[197:47] Next up is Empty the Warrens, Empty the Chions. It's three in a red for a sorcery. Create two one-one goblin creature tokens, and it has Storm.

Speaker 2:
[197:57] I don't think this card's very good. I do think that some of these like wild Prismari decks could technically justify a bunch of different stuff, but this is not one of those things. I wouldn't do it. I like F for Empty the Warrens.

Speaker 1:
[198:09] Yeah, I would not play it. Next is Jessica's Will. This is two in a red for a sorcery. It says choose one. If you control a commander as you cast a spell, you may choose both. So you can either add red for each card in target opponent's hand or exile the top three cards of your library. You may play them this turn. I don't really like either of those options that much, honestly.

Speaker 2:
[198:30] No, I don't think so. And you're probably not gonna have a commander in play. So.

Speaker 1:
[198:34] Yeah, probably not. Next up, I do like the Monstrous Rage. This is red for an instant targ creature. It gets plus two plus O until end of turn. And you create a monster roll token attached to it, which is like that. Those did not age well, but they are good power level wise. Basically it puts a thing on it, an enchantment on it. I think they get plus one plus one and trample. They gives it plus one plus one and trample. So it gets plus three plus one and trample. And you get to keep the plus one plus one and trample after as well. A really powerful combat trick. This is the type of thing that I think that aggressive Prismari deck might actually want to make room for. I don't think they really want combat tricks that much, but this one is gnarly.

Speaker 2:
[199:14] I mean, Monstrous Rage is just... We know how good this card is from Constructed. It's just an unbelievably pushed card in terms of mana cost.

Speaker 1:
[199:22] Yeah. I would give it a B minus or something. I mean, it is a super powerful card, but I don't know. Am I jumping out of my chair for a really great combat trick? I don't think so, but I'm playing it every time.

Speaker 2:
[199:35] Yeah, I would give it probably a B just because when you do put it in your deck, it's going to be really good. It's just a lot of decks won't want it.

Speaker 1:
[199:41] Pyretic Ritual is one in a red instant. It adds three red to your mana pool. No. Next up is Return the Favor. This is red, red for an instant with Spree. You can add a mana to have it copy target instant spell, sorcery spell, activated ability or triggered ability. You can choose a new target for the copy and you can add an additional mana or just that one to change the target of spell or ability with a single target. But each of these costs minimum red, red one. And that's really awkward.

Speaker 2:
[200:11] That's the floor. I mean, the powerful mode here is definitely change the target.

Speaker 1:
[200:15] Yes, because you might actually have the mana.

Speaker 2:
[200:19] Yeah, because it works out their spells. Though you can copy their spells as well. But the powerful mode is like they cast a removal spell. You spend three mana, redirect it to their creature, and you just get paid off massively. I don't know how likely that's going to be. My guess is it's just not the easiest to set up. I put this in one of the blue red spells then cut it after a few games because it just wasn't working.

Speaker 1:
[200:43] Yeah, too situational. I just want to be able to be proactive when I draw my great cards, and I don't want to sit here and wait for myself to have nine mana or eight mana or my opponent to cast something good, and then, oh, I miss my window. I would prefer to just leave that stuff off the side, even if occasionally this does something stupid. So I would give it like a D, return the favor. I just wouldn't prioritize it at all.

Speaker 2:
[201:08] Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1:
[201:09] Subterranean Tremors is red X for a sorcery. Subterranean Tremors deals X damage to each creature without flying. If X is four or more, destroy all artifacts. If X is eight or more, create an eight, eight red lizard creature token. Can you get to nine mana?

Speaker 2:
[201:28] I mean, you're more likely to get to nine mana when you have a card that's killing all their creatures, like can you then bring it back later with like a regrowth of some kind?

Speaker 1:
[201:37] Sure. Yeah, that's a game plan. It does only hit non-flyers, but that's usually fine, right?

Speaker 2:
[201:46] Yeah, that's usually not that big of a deal. I mean, the Subterranean Tremors looks awesome to me. Like, you're gonna just... If you're a controlling deck, paying a red in three or four to just kill all the creatures sounds great. And every now and then you get to kill one of the artifacts too, why not? And then if you can wait till nine mana, you kill everything, you can kill everything and make an 8-8.

Speaker 1:
[202:09] Yeah. It looks really good, honestly. I mean, I think I would give it like a B plus.

Speaker 2:
[202:16] I would probably give it a B plus. Like, if you want a wrath, it's a great wrath, but it's a wrath that every now and then can make an 8-8. It's kind of how I look like it, the look at it. It also has some weird stuff like where, yeah, you can't kill their flyer, but it doesn't hurt your flyers. If you have a 4-4 and they have all 3-3s, you don't have to lose your creature or that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:
[202:35] Right. Next up is Awaken the Woods. This is green green X for a sorcery. Create X11 green forest dryad land creature tokens that are affected by summoning sickness.

Speaker 2:
[202:48] The sweet spot is casting this for 4 mana to make 2 2 2 1 1s and then ramp up to a 7 drop next turn, something like that, I guess is the idea.

Speaker 1:
[202:58] Because they do tap for mana, they're also 1 1s.

Speaker 2:
[203:01] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[203:06] I mean, I guess I would do that. I would give Awaken the Woods a C. That seems fine.

Speaker 2:
[203:09] It's okay. It's not great. It is just kind of expensive. I guess it's nice that you can cast it as a double ramp on 4, which, you know, and then cast it for like 7 or 8 later. If you just draw it later.

Speaker 1:
[203:23] Yeah, totally. Next is Berserk. This is one of the OG cards. This is green for an instant. Cast a spell only before the combat damage step. Nice. Target creature gains trample and gets plus X plus zero until end of turn where X is its power. At the beginning of the next end step, destroy that creature if it attacked this turn. This used to be like busted and sought after card.

Speaker 2:
[203:49] And now I'm just like, yeah, it's a really cool alpha card.

Speaker 1:
[203:51] Yeah. But now I'm just like, nah.

Speaker 2:
[203:56] I mean, this looks like an F to me. Like I just don't, I just don't really see how you're using this card.

Speaker 1:
[204:00] I mean, even if it didn't kill the creature, I wouldn't be that excited about it. It freaking kills your own creature. No way. Next is Crop Rot.

Speaker 2:
[204:07] Pure plus five plus O is not even good. But I mean, at some point, I really hope that someone combines monstrous rage, berserk and then bulk up to the double thing.

Speaker 1:
[204:17] And then it goes nuts.

Speaker 2:
[204:18] But that'd be cool if they did. But yeah.

Speaker 1:
[204:20] But not the game plan. Next up is Crop Rotation. Green instant is additional cost to cast the spell Sack of Land. Search your library for a land card, put it on the battlefield and shuffle.

Speaker 2:
[204:30] Nah, I don't think there's a land you can set for this. Not even close.

Speaker 1:
[204:35] Next is Giant Growth. This is much better than Berserk. Green for an instant hard creature gets plus three plus three until end of turn. I don't know if Green wants it. I mean, we did talk about wanting combat tricks in conjunction with pests. So maybe this does actually sneak in and you play a copy of Giant Growth because they're just going to be blocking your pests all the time. And for just one mana, you can basically just upgrade that to, oh, your creature died instead. I don't know how much room those decks have for cards like this, but it would be effective in that strategy.

Speaker 2:
[205:07] Yeah, the cost is right. One mana for plus three plus three is just a good deal. And so this is a little bit like Monstrous Rage. It's not quite as powerful. Monstrous Rage is a really messed up card, but it's similar in that if you want a combat trick, it's a good one and not every deck will want it. So I like C, C+.

Speaker 1:
[205:25] Same. Ooh, here's a Luis Scott-Vargas card. Glimpse of Nature, green, sorcery, whenever you cast a creature spell this turn, draw a card. Was that in your Elves deck?

Speaker 2:
[205:35] It sure was. Unfortunately, it won't be in any of my decks here because to cast, to make this a one mana draw too, which is where it would be good, as opposed to just nothing and cycling, you'd have to cast two creatures afterwards.

Speaker 1:
[205:48] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[205:49] It's not really going to happen. It's an F, unfortunately.

Speaker 1:
[205:51] Luis did win a pro tour with that card, but he's not going to win any limited matches with it. Next up is Knockout Maneuver. Two and a green for a sorcery. Put a plus one plus one counter on target creature you control, then it deals damage equal to its power to target creature an opponent controls. These are good. It's sorcery speed. But these do, I mean, this is like really good. Actually, wait, if you get a counter and it's a bite, weird.

Speaker 2:
[206:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[206:18] Usually those are, even the fight versions of this are very good, but this is even better.

Speaker 2:
[206:22] Knockout Maneuver is a very strong card. It's a B level fight card.

Speaker 1:
[206:25] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[206:25] I give it a B.

Speaker 1:
[206:26] Yeah, B level bite. Next is Pick Your Poison. This is green for a sorcery. Choose one. You have three options. You can have each opponent sacrifice an artifact of their choice or an enchantment of their choice or a creature with flying of their choice. It looks like a sideboard card at best.

Speaker 2:
[206:44] Yeah, I think it's a sideboard card. I don't think I'd be naked.

Speaker 1:
[206:47] Next is Royal Treatment. This is green for an instant tar creature you control gains hexproof until end of turn. Create a Royal Roll token attached to it and that gives plus one plus one and ward one.

Speaker 2:
[207:02] I've lost so badly to this card already. It's like Monster's Rage. It's just clearly better than just a one mana card.

Speaker 1:
[207:08] Definitely.

Speaker 2:
[207:09] You cast this to either win a fight because it gives plus one plus one or stop a spell with hexproof and then it just sits around and ward one and plus one plus one is just awesome. So I like B for Royal Treatment. I would play this in any deck that has creatures. Obviously, you're like-

Speaker 1:
[207:24] I would too.

Speaker 2:
[207:27] You're very creature like Quandrix deck might not want it, but pretty much every deck should just play this card.

Speaker 1:
[207:33] Agreed. Also, there's the additional bomb factor here where we just see so many great cards that protecting them is even better. Next is Shamanic Revelation. This is three green green for a sorcery. Draw a card for each creature you control. And it has ferocious, you gain four life for each creature you control with power four or greater.

Speaker 2:
[207:53] So I do like that this gains life and draws cards at the same time. I mean, those are the sort of things that you want to have happen. They want to pair them. The downside of this is it can obviously just be dead if you don't have any creatures in play. And you have to have like three creatures in play for it to really be exciting. So I'm pretty cool in Shamanic Revelation. I think that maybe like the really creature like Whitherbloom deck could use this as a card draw spell in like 16 creature deck. I think that it's like a build around like C.

Speaker 1:
[208:24] Yeah, that's how I was thinking too. There is a narrow window for this card to be a thing, but even then it's not like amazing. Next is Shared Roots. This is one and a green for a sorcery. It's a lesson. And it says search your library for a basic land card, put it on the battlefield tapped and then shuffle. So this is the rampant growth. Yeah. Would you play it in like green-black? Because obviously for Converge, it's a must-have item.

Speaker 2:
[208:50] It's the nuts for Converge because it ramps and fixes your mana. But I think that most green decks would just play this card.

Speaker 1:
[208:55] I think so too. And I think Quandrix really wants this, right?

Speaker 2:
[208:58] Yeah. So it's like a B minus card, probably.

Speaker 1:
[209:00] Probably. It's really well suited for this format. Next is Triumph of the Hordes. This is two green green for a sorcery. Until end of turn, creatures you control get plus one, plus one and gain trample and infect, which means that they deal their damage in the form of minus one, minus one counters to creatures or poison to players.

Speaker 2:
[209:20] Yeah, this is an interesting one because if you cast this, you don't deal normal damage anymore. So if you cast this and get them to nine poison, it's like you just didn't deal damage to them because you're probably not going to deal all the last point. But it also means that your creatures are lethal at like a much lower threshold because poison is kind of like double damage, right? It only takes 10 counters instead of 20. I think overall it's probably not good. It's like an overrun that's even more conditional than a normal one because-

Speaker 1:
[209:47] Right.

Speaker 2:
[209:49] There's just, I mean, I guess if you have another combat trick, you can really get them. But a lot of the time, it does feel like they're just going to do, make blocks such that they go to like eight or nine poison. And then you overrun them and didn't really accomplish that much.

Speaker 1:
[210:06] I love the upside, but I agree with you. I think it's, I don't want to add more conditions to my overrun. And plus they've given us a bunch of overrun-ish style effects, putting a bunch of counters, put temporary pumping. I think I would just stay away from Triumph of the Hordes. That being said, when it is well set up and executed, it is a hammer. Like it ends the game on the spot. Last green card is Veil of Summer. This is green for an instant draw card if an opponent has cast a blue or black spell this turn. Spells you control can't be countered this turn. You and permanents you control gain hexproof from blue and black until end of turn. That's going to be...

Speaker 2:
[210:42] I mean, one of the GOAT sideboard cards, it is funny to note that four of the five schools are blue or black.

Speaker 1:
[210:50] That's interesting.

Speaker 2:
[210:51] Everything but Lorehold.

Speaker 1:
[210:53] That's interesting.

Speaker 2:
[210:54] You technically have that. The thing is though, you can play against a deck that is one of these two colors and that is not going to be that good at getting hit by Veil. So it's not Pyroblast. If it was Pyroblast, we'd be talking a different thing. So I think Veil Summer is a sideboard card. It's like a sideboard A. You bring that in against someone who's got four or five black removal spells, and it's just like you're just going to crush them.

Speaker 1:
[211:20] They will concede.

Speaker 2:
[211:23] But I don't think you're supposed to main deck it.

Speaker 1:
[211:25] I agree. It looks like there's one gold card for each color pair as well. So there's Bring to Light, so three blue green for sorcery with Converge. Search your library for a creature instant or sorcery card with mana value, less than or equal to the number of colors of mana spent to cast this spell. Exile that card, then shuffle. You may cast the card without paying its mana cost.

Speaker 2:
[211:47] Ironically, you can't bring the light for a Converge card because it won't have any mana spent.

Speaker 1:
[211:53] Yeah, and a lot of your best payoffs are going to have Converge written on them.

Speaker 2:
[211:57] I think this is like a build around like C, which is to say you should probably not play it. Your Converge deck probably is interested or at least would consider it. What makes Bring to Light a lot stronger is if you have like a Wrath to search for. It's kind of like all the stuff we talked about with Vampiric Tutor, if you have some good cards, the biggest difference here is you don't end up down any mana or cards when you bring to light for something that costs like a comparable amount of mana at least.

Speaker 1:
[212:23] So if you can bring light for four colors, like I would want a really good four mana creature and a sweeper or something like that at four. I want just very diverse put me ahead or get me back in this game or wipe out your board or something like that. Next up is Culling Ritual. This is two green, black for a sorcery. It says destroy each non-land permanent with mana value two or less. Add green or black for each permanent destroyed this way.

Speaker 2:
[212:50] I just don't think there's enough small stuff to make it really worth it.

Speaker 1:
[212:53] Deflecting poem.

Speaker 2:
[212:54] I'm out on Culling Ritual. There is a chance you sideboard it. If you have this card in your pool, then having it in your sideboard and bring it in could be good in best of three.

Speaker 1:
[213:02] Yeah. Next is deflecting palm. This is red, white for an instant. The next time a source of your choice would deal damage to you this turn, prevent that damage. If damage is prevented this way, deflecting palm deals that much damage to that source's controller. No.

Speaker 2:
[213:19] The problem is it only stops damage to you. So it's just a burn spell. It's a life gain burn spell, where if you stop a four, four, you dealt four to them and gained four life. That's just not a good enough card.

Speaker 1:
[213:28] If you could redirect this over to a creature, great. But you can't.

Speaker 2:
[213:32] Totally different story then.

Speaker 1:
[213:34] Here's some business Luis. One of our favorites, expressive iteration. Red, blue for a sorcery. Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them in your hand. Put one of them on the bottom of your library and exile one of them. You can play the exiled one this turn.

Speaker 2:
[213:48] Yeah. This is a B. It's a great card draw spell. You're usually gonna wanna cast this on any turn, but turn two, because if you play this and I've not played a land yet, it's just so easy to have land be the one card exiled. So you just get kind of like free value at that point.

Speaker 1:
[214:02] Yeah. Great card B. And then Fracture. Red, white for an instant. Destroy target artifact, enchantment or planeswalker. Where's the creature?

Speaker 2:
[214:15] Yeah. It does not kill creatures. So it looks like a sideboard card to me.

Speaker 1:
[214:19] And then what do we have? Special guests as well? We do. All right. So let's go over those. First one up is Archaomancer. Nice. That's in here. Okay. Two blue, blue for a one, two human wizard. When it enters, return target instant or sorcery card from your graveyard to your hand.

Speaker 2:
[214:38] I'm going to be happy to play this in any blue deck, I think. Just four mana for a one, two. That gets a removal spell back. Like it gives you a little speed bump. It's not really a two for one, because a one, two is not like a full card, but there's also just some cool loops you can set up with Archaomancer. Imagine the deck that has the green, black cauldron that lets you set creatures. I could imagine a three color deck with Archaomancer and that card just looping this over and over again is going to be a really easy way to win. So play it just straight up, it's okay, but once you start factoring in bounce or raise deads, Archaomancer getting back the return two creatures and gain two life card, that's pretty good. You get to set up some cool stuff. So there's a lot of potential in Archaomancer. It's like a C plus level card on its own.

Speaker 1:
[215:25] Yeah, I would run it in that Prismari deck for sure though, like the controlling one. Next up is Archmage Emeritus. This is two blue blue for a two, two, and it says magecraft whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, draw a card. So you have to pay four mana for a two, two. It's fragile, not very good at affecting the board, but it is an engine if it sticks.

Speaker 2:
[215:47] Yeah, it looks like a B.

Speaker 1:
[215:48] Yeah, I would go a little lower. I am very nervous about paying a four mana two, two that if they kill it, I feel like I'm just straight up behind.

Speaker 2:
[215:58] Well, I would want a lot of one mana cards and especially the card I'm really looking for with this is the dive down, the blue, give a creature plus three. Oh my God.

Speaker 1:
[216:08] Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[216:10] You see what's going on with that. Like if you just turn five that and then when they play their removal spell, they're going to leap out of their seat to play. And you just, you just hit them with that. You've killed counter the removal draw card. Then you untap and then the game's over.

Speaker 1:
[216:23] Next up is murmuring mystic. This is three and a blue for a one five human wizard. And whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, create a one one blue bird illusion creature token with flying. This card's a house.

Speaker 2:
[216:34] I mean this card is way better in Archmage Emeritus because it's a one five. So it's way harder to kill. And you might think a card is better than a one one, but a one one flying that you play for free, I actually think is generally better than a card. Like-

Speaker 1:
[216:47] It's right there, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[216:50] And in the situations where, I mean, there are situations where one is better than the other, but I think in the situations where you're losing, a lot of the time, the mystic's gonna be helping you a lot more.

Speaker 1:
[216:59] Exactly. It gives you board presence right now to keep the game flowing where cards in your hand, they need to be mana spent to get them out.

Speaker 2:
[217:06] You let your spells draw the cards and it makes the creatures.

Speaker 1:
[217:09] Right, yeah. I would give it, I mean, in the Prismari decks...

Speaker 2:
[217:13] I would give this an A minus.

Speaker 1:
[217:15] Yeah, A minus, like it's so strong.

Speaker 2:
[217:18] I mean, in any format that this card took, you showed up in Limited, showed up in like Popper or whatever. If your opponent casts this card and you don't kill it, you do feel like you're gonna lose pretty quickly, to be honest.

Speaker 1:
[217:28] 100%, great card. And well set up in this format. Next is Grim Horror Specs. This is two and a black for a three, two human wizard with morph black so you can play it face down and turn it face up for black mana. And whenever another non-token creature you control dies, you draw a card. Unfortunately, not with the pest, but otherwise it's great.

Speaker 2:
[217:52] Yeah, I like B for Grim Horror Specs. I mean, the morph part is not gonna get you too far because I don't think there's any other morphs, but it's still a pretty threatening piece of text to have in play.

Speaker 1:
[218:07] What could it be?

Speaker 2:
[218:08] Every trade draws a card.

Speaker 1:
[218:11] I guess the only thing then is you could cast it if you didn't have black mana. Like that's what you're getting out of morph.

Speaker 2:
[218:18] Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[218:18] Like you could use up your mana still. Next up is Dualcaster Mage, one red, red for a two, two with Flash. It's a human wizard. When this creature enters, copy target instant or sorcery spell, you may choose new targets for the copy.

Speaker 2:
[218:32] This is just too expensive. And also there's three different cards in the set to copy instant or sorcery. No kidding.

Speaker 1:
[218:38] Man, they saw Prismari and they're just like, great.

Speaker 2:
[218:40] They're like special guests, bonus sheets, whatever. It's still kind of funny to be looking at all three on this review. So yeah, I mean, I like D for Dualcaster Mage. It's just, it's too expensive. It can copy their spells, which is really strong, but I just, that almost puts it more of a sideboard card. Like I got, you know, if I was Lorehold and I played against Prismari, I think I'd probably bring this card in.

Speaker 1:
[219:04] Oh yeah, that's true. You would for sure. Yeah, especially because it doesn't have a cap on the cost of the thing that you copy, right? Just, they cast some seven drop, whatever, and you're like, I'll take that. Thank you very much. Yeah, I would too. Next up is Magus of the Library. This is green green for a one one human wizard that taps to add colorless or taps to draw a card, but you can only activate it if you have exactly seven cards in hand. This is a Library of Alexandria shout out.

Speaker 2:
[219:33] You're just not going to use the ability and green green for a colorless tapper is like the wrong way.

Speaker 1:
[219:38] Yeah, exactly. You want one on a colorless for a green tapper. Yeah, I don't think I'd play Magus of the Library. I think I would just...

Speaker 2:
[219:45] Looks like an F to me, honestly.

Speaker 1:
[219:46] I just wouldn't put it in my deck. Next is Sylvan Library. Oh my God. One and a green for an enchantment at the beginning of your draw step. You may draw two additional cards. If you do, choose two cards in your hand drawn this turn. So of those three, you choose two of them. For each of those cards, you can either pay for life to keep it in your hand or put it back on the top of your library. So it gives you filtering no matter what. And then if you're like me, you pay a bunch of life to get those cards into your hand, basically ASAP.

Speaker 2:
[220:18] I just don't think paying for life to draw a card is a good deal.

Speaker 1:
[220:23] It expires very quickly.

Speaker 2:
[220:26] And then getting to reorganize your cards when you're not shuffling is not all that good either. So I just don't think I'd play Sylvan. Maybe I'd side it in against a control deck. Cause if you are playing against a Prismari or Quandrix control deck that really is not attacking your life total, then yeah, playing this to pay eight life to draw two extra cards could be kind of legit. But for the most part, I don't think this is where I'd be interested in going.

Speaker 1:
[220:52] Next up is Adrix and Neve Twincasters. This is two green blue for a two, two legendary merfolk wizard with ward two. And it says if one or more tokens would be created under your control, twice that many tokens are created instead.

Speaker 2:
[221:10] I'm just not usually a fan of token doublers. I just feel like they don't really work. So I'd do D for Adrix and Neve. I guess you could maybe construct a deck where you'd want this.

Speaker 1:
[221:18] It wouldn't even work with fractals, right? It would just make another 0-0 and then it would die. Next is Cody Vosiferous Codex. This card is actually sweet. It's three mana for a 1-4 legendary artifact creature book construct. And it says, you can't cast permanent spells. That's a tough opening negotiation, but it says you can pay four tapit to add Wuburg, so one of each color of mana. And it says when you next cast a spell this turn, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile an instant or sorcery card with lesser mana value. Until end of turn, you may cast that card without paying its mana cost. Put each other card exiled this way on the bottom of your library in a random order. So it taps for a mana effectively if you can put four into it. It's all colors, so hopefully it helps you cast stuff, but you can't cast permanence. But anything else that you cast cascades basically into an instant or sorcery.

Speaker 2:
[222:19] Yeah, I remember playing this in Dominaria. I think that's where it showed up. And it was a lot of fun. Like I would play Cody in a heavy spell deck. You don't literally need no other permanence because if this is in play, usually you're doing pretty well. So you're more on the spot of like, I'll use this until they kill it and then I can play my permanence again.

Speaker 1:
[222:45] It's funny, you know what it was actually printed in? It was in Strixhaven.

Speaker 2:
[222:49] Oh, Strixhaven?

Speaker 1:
[222:50] I thought it was Dominarian too. I just looked at it like-

Speaker 2:
[222:52] Was it in the bonus sheet or something? Or maybe I'm just getting it wrong probably.

Speaker 1:
[222:56] That's funny.

Speaker 2:
[222:57] But yeah, no, I think Cody's a build around B. Pretty cool in the all spells deck. They do have to kill it.

Speaker 1:
[223:02] It really is. And then there's two cards left, but this last one can't be real. So the last card is Library of Leng, which is one mana for an artifact. You have no maximum hand size. If an effect causes you to discard a card, discard it, but you may put it on top of your library instead of your graveyard.

Speaker 2:
[223:20] If this effect causes you to discard a card, discard it, it's fine.

Speaker 1:
[223:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[223:23] But.

Speaker 1:
[223:23] But yeah, this is a classic, like an alpha card.

Speaker 2:
[223:27] Alpha template. Right.

Speaker 1:
[223:28] Where it's like, they didn't really understand all that stuff yet. It's an F.

Speaker 2:
[223:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[223:35] Even a sideboard. Funny enough, Library of Alexandria showed up on our sheet here. I don't know what that's about, but there is no way they're reprinting it.

Speaker 2:
[223:41] That's online only, I think, is Library of Alexandria.

Speaker 1:
[223:43] That makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[223:46] Just to be clear, it's a good card. You should put it in your deck. If you draw it in your opening hand, if you're on the play, what you do is you go Library, go turn two, you untap, drop to seven, drop to eight, play your land. On the draw, you just play it and start using it on their turn. This will show up in people's arena packs, I think. I don't know about Magic Online. It's a busted card if it's in your opening hand. And I think a colorless land is worth that risk. So you can take and play this card, just to be clear.

Speaker 1:
[224:11] Yeah. It also has one of my favorite artworks of all time. Also just the layout, like the Rabian Nights version is just beautiful.

Speaker 2:
[224:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[224:21] We did it Luis. We got all the way through. They give us so many extra cards. We just don't want to leave our listeners hanging on if they do happen to open these, even though the amount of time we spend on the bonus sheets is not efficient by how much they actually get opened. But there was a lot of cards on these bonus sheets that were legit playables, like just cards that if they were in the set, you'd be like, yeah, hey, that's a big.

Speaker 2:
[224:44] I think it's important to know the difference, especially since some of these cards can look good and be bad or vice versa.

Speaker 1:
[224:50] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[224:51] Deflecting palm is very high on my list of cards that look awesome, but it's really not that good.

Speaker 1:
[224:56] Right. This set continues to impress on power level. It looks extremely pushed and these rares and mythics look really, really strong and the set looks well set up to actually cast them too. So I would not be surprised if this is a haymaker style set where you're just playing these huge swinging cards over and over again. It looks really exciting. I can't wait to dive into it, which I'm going to do now. So if you want to find us on social media, I'm arshelunderscoreLR and Luis is LSV. You can find everything related to the podcast over at lrcast.com. I want to say thank you to each and every one of our patrons for supporting us over on patreon.com/limitedresources. And thank you to Ultimate Guard for their support of the show. That is going to do it for this one. Good luck in your drafts. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 2:
[225:40] All right, so looking at Strixhaven, we've got Brain Freeze, we've got Empty the Warrens. I already have concluded my study on the wisdom card, the four blue, blue, blue one, and the white, black Ultimatum. I'm trying to figure out, I wanna try to win with all of the weird alternate finishers.

Speaker 1:
[225:59] Oh, I love it.

Speaker 2:
[226:00] Kind of see which ones end up being the best. But the main one I haven't really gotten to work yet is Brain Freeze. I'm gonna be on the lookout for that. But there's a lot of alternate win conditions in this format. Or not alternate win, but expensive, game-winning cards crackle with power. Like the Subterranean Tremors card, the Deal X to each non-flyer. It feels like one of the designers at Strixhaven drafted a control deck and then lost because they didn't have a finisher. They're like, all right, you know what? I'm gonna put traumatic critique in the set. That's the Deal X spell. I'm just gonna put like 10 of these cards in and that way you'll always have a win condition because that does seem like what's going on. And I'm excited to try to win games this way.