At last, gold! There’s gold in them thar cards! This is where all the good stuff is lurking.
Well, some of it, anyway.
Frontline Rush & Windcrag Siege: Lumping these two together as there’s a decent chance both these cards will see play in the same decks. Boros Convoke, as mentioned, has been a more-than-decent deck in recent times, and both these cards would slot in well into that archetype. Not sure if Windcrag Siege would replace or supplement Warleader’s Cry in the deck yet. But Frontline Rush is a card that will see a lot of play, you heard it here first. Grab your copies early.
Jeskai Revelation: You bounce a permanent! You deal four damage! You gain four life! You get two 1/1 Monks! You will never ever play this card!
Skirmish Rhino: A meme, in three parts:
Child: Can we go out for Siege Rhino?
Mom: We have Siege Rhino at home
Siege Rhino at home: …
This card lines up favorably with Rhox War Monk, which saw some play back in the day, a day unfortunately with access to Noble Hierarch.
You know where I could see this finding a home; when Birthing Pod gets unbanned in Modern, just in time for people to realize that it was a different time and chaining Skirmish Rhino into Siege Rhino would have been really awesome in 2012 but this ain’t 2012.
Perennation: I am reminded of a time when there was a really good reanimator deck that was Standard-legal and ran Unburial Rites, Angel of Serenity, and Grisly Salvage (yes, that was a very long time ago). There’s quite a few quality cycling creatures in the Standard environment right now, run some discard, a bunch of ramp, and Perennation and boom, you’ve got yourself a wincon. I don’t think it’s gonna happen but I’ve been wrong about lots of things, just ask my financial advisor.
And, for those wordsmiths out there, “perennation” means, botanically, referring to perennial plants that come back every year. Find a way to use it in a sentence, impress your friends.
Eshki Dragonclaw: To be honest, you could have stopped with the one text line of abilities, that honestly would have been good enough, because the rest of that text is a lot of hoops to jump through even in a limited environment. That should be on the Tarkir prerelease bingo card; “trigger Eshki’s ability” and it’ll be a blue moon when that happens.
Call the Spirit Dragons: Alternate wincons, come and get ‘em, get your alternate wincons here! Hot buttered wincons, get ‘em while they’re hot, get ‘em while they’re buttered!
An awesome auto-include in any five-color Dragon-based commander deck, but probably too limited outside of that.
Death Begets Life: Death Begets Life, and this card begets you instant “kill them now” status at the Commander table. But, if you’re running this card, you’re already running Villainous Wealth and all the other BUG broken stuff that you deserve that target. That right, you, you’re deck is bad and you should feel bad! I’m not afraid to call you out!
The Siege cards: Let’s discuss these more in depth, I touched on Windcrag Siege earlier, which would seem to have a nice home in a R/W aggro deck of some flavor with two relevant abilities. There’s five Sieges in total, requiring opposite colors, and each geared to their wedge’s strengths. Some Sieges have two relevant abilities in constructed format, some one, and one … well, we won’t talk too much about that one.
Besides Windcrag, the other Siege that has build-around potential is Glacierwood Siege, which could fit into a self-mill or mill-your-opponent strategy very easily.
The other three Sieges, honestly, either just don’t do enough or require you to jump through a number of hoo
ps to get the payoff. Windcrag Siege and Glacierwood Siege, those are the ones you’re gonna want to get.
Auroral Procession: Hey, speaking of cards that play well with Glacierwood Siege, here you go!
Zurgo, Thunder’s Decree: A nice payoff to a mobilize-centric deck if you can make the mana work. But what are a few painlands among friends? Oh, wait, mono-red doesn’t run painlands. Okay, moving on…
Lotuslight Dancers: A “Zombie Bard,” that’s a new one. I can’t wait for the alters with Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon … what, too soon?
The new legendary Dragon cycle: Probably not going to see the same amount of play the two-color dragons did in the original Tarkir block, because three is more difficult than two and, by and large, these guys are pale imitations of the original. Commander, that’s another story, you could easily build a deck around these guys, and since you, and by you I mean nobody, asked for it, I’d rank them as follows:
1. Ureni, the Song Unending
2. Betor, Kin to All
3. Teval, Arbiter of Virtue
4. Shiko, Paragon of the Way
5. Neriv, Heart of the Storm
Ureni is almost by default the best by virtue of being in a ramp color and being able to kill an opponent in two hits.
All the other rares: I could go on but the more I dig into the rares, the more this feels like the original Tarkir block, which had tons of rares that rocked in a three-color draft format but saw little play outside of that … trust me, I know, most of them are still in my bulk bin.
But this looks like it’s going to be a very, very fun set to draft with a lot of nuance and overlap between the five wedges; experienced deckbuilders are going to enjoy this set. But in terms of constructed formats, and because everyone loves lists, these are the top ten cards I’d be looking to get, in no particular order.
1. Ugin, Eye of the Storms
2. Clarion Conqueror
3. Voice of Victory
4. The Sibsig Ceremony
5. Magmatic Hellkite
6. Sage of the Skies
7. Ureni, the Song Unending
8. Rot-Curse Rakshasa
9. Smile at Death
10. United Battlefront
And that’ll do it for this snarky set review. I sure seem to like white a lot. Maybe I’m right about some cards. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m really wrong! Feel free to tell me when you see me around.