Magic the Gathering Bloomburrow Review, Part 4 of 4: Red, Green, and Colorless Cards

Magic’s newest expansion takes us to the newly introduced plane of Bloomburrow, a land without humans populated instead by anthropomorphic animals.  

Last time we covered the set’s white, blue, and black cards, and this time we’ll be look at the rest of the monocolor cards from the set, covering red, green, and colorless cards. As usual we won’t be looking at everything, and we’ll be doing this primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Artist’s Talent

Marcy: A fairly standard looting card, but in Standard, this is not only too slow for Red decks, it is almost comically too slow, meaning this card was certainly not made for that format or Limited in mind at all.

BPhillipYork: Super strong card, offering card selection, burying to your yard, or leveraging things like Conspiracy Theorist. Honestly even if it only had the level 1 ability that would probably be playable. Level 2 is useful, level 3 is great too. Really strong card for burn decks or decks that want to storm off, or decks that want to dig through the deck. A true auto-consider card for red.

FromTheShire: Tacking a loot effect onto all of your noncreature spells is great for spellslinger decks. The cost reduction is also great, and then boosting all of your damage by 2 for your big turn? Hell yeah.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Blacksmith’s Talent

Marcy: Really no place in Standard, since there’s no Equipment of note. I suppose if you had 4 mana open, you could use this to single turn slam some sort of huge equipment onto something, but I’m not overly familiar with the state of Hammertime decks, and most of those can do that for cheaper and faster than this can, so I assume it isn’t very good for that either.

BPhillipYork: Solid support for red Equipment decks, which isn’t really that shocking. A token equipment is mediocre, but 4 mana for auto-equipping an equipment each turn isn’t bad. Giving everything double strike and haste is a strong finisher.

FromTheShire: The initial equipment isn’t good enough for this to see play outside of probably Commander, but in there getting a free equip is excellent since a lot of powerful equipments are balanced by their high equip costs. Giving everyone on the team holding a sword or wearing boots double strike and haste is a huge buff to close out the game as well.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Blooming Blast

FromTheShire: This seems like a really solid piece of removal for Standard, likely to see play in the aggro decks like Lizards and Mice at the very least. Searing Blood is still good even if they also get a Treasure turns out.

Marcy: While you would think that, it actually is seeing absolutely no play, because there’s just better red removal if your red deck needs to run it, like Witchstalker Frenzy.

BPhillipYork: Probably isn’t going to move the needle much in Commander, as 3 life lost isn’t particularly relevant and there are just stronger removal options. However it would be fun to play in decks that punish your opponents for having artifacts, either by causing them damage or making your creatures bigger based on the number of artifacts they have in play, or just plain stealing them with a Hellkite Tyrant.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Byway Barterer

Marcy: I know the Expend decks tried to make some waves in the release period, but they all kind of petered out (as did the Raccoon decks). I don’t really think it’s very good in either case, but the fact remains that since “Discard your hand” is a separate clause, if you spend 4 mana you get to just draw 2 cards if you are empty handed.

BPhillipYork: Really a lot of potential for just burning through your hand and casting every card in it each turn. To really pop off you’d need some red manage generators like Storm-Kiln Artist. You’d also need all your cards to cast 2, which is probably too many moving pieces and too limiting for a singleton format, but still it would be fun. Worth noting that you can do this on your opponents turns as well, expend doesn’t care about whose turn it is just how many mana have been expended that turn.

FromTheShire: Yeah I’m not overly impressed with expend. There’s not a lot of support for it and only triggering once per turn is a definite downside, though of course in the right deck you can trigger it on other people’s turns as well. This is probably the best of the lot and eh?

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Coruscation Mage

FromTheShire: Guttersnipe with extra steps is still pretty good. In Standard this helps the prowess decks close out games, and in Commander I like that there’s a ton of ways to take advantage of the fact this makes a token copy if you want to lean into that.

Marcy: Again, sadly, while it on paper SHOULD do that, the Otter Prowess decks just don’t really seem to work all that well, and this card struggles to find a lot of footing in the format. Some of that really just comes from the fact that currently, Otter Prowess lacks a lot of spells that will end games.

BPhillipYork: Um, yeah that’s obnoxious. The built in ability to clone it when the triggered effect is clearly what you care about makes this is a super option to many of the default “when you cast a [noncreature] spell deal damage or cause life loss” effects for spellslinger decks. The balance is the base 2 toughness and then of course 1 on the offspring.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest

Marcy: A shockingly good card that is really just waiting for the right combination of cards to get it to see play more steadily. Expensive as it is, in a ramp deck or other sort of form that gets lots of big creatures on the field, this thing could simply end the game just by being around if you were able to exile enough cards.

BPhillipYork: Chicken… dragon. Fairly brutal card to be honest, and if you run extra combats or extra turns this is potentially a finisher. On the other hand it’s a chicken-dragon.

FromTheShire: At release people were talking about this at the top end for some of the red decks, and while that hasn’t materialized I don’t think it’s due to this card not being good enough. I won’t be surprised if this gets there at some point before rotation. In Commander it’s a great card engine while also throwing a bunch of damage around.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Emberheart Challenger

FromTheShire: Great card advantage engine for Mouse aggro, and having haste built in is clutch. I don’t think the deck plays a ton of things to trigger prowess, but you’re certainly happy to have it when you’re using Blooming Blast to remove a blocker, deal 3, and also get an extra point of damage here.

Marcy: Seeing a lot of play in Red, Boros, and Mouse Typal decks, this card certainly has a lot going on at just 2 CMC. The Haste and Prowess are quite powerful on their own since the body is bigger than most Prowess creatures, but the card advantage, and potentially to continue giving you Prowess triggers off a lucky flip, is very good.

BPhillipYork: This is an interesting example of the slow power creep of cards. A 2/2 with haste and prowess for 2, with a built in draw type effect when you buff it. Very powerful for decks that want to rush and finish off opponents quickly. This won’t really work in Commander though.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Festival of Embers

FromTheShire: I’m guessing this is meant to come down late game for the storm decks and close things out but usually the game is over by that point. In Commander I would just stick with Underworld Breach or Mizzix’s Mastery.

Marcy: Seems like a card for Storm or Commander and not for standard in any way, shape, or form. I didn’t even know this card existed until I saw it here.

BPhillipYork: Giving your whole graveyard flashback effectively at a cost of 1 life is really bonkers strong. 5 mana really balances it out, but even so you can fill your yard, then get this into play, then burn out your opponents in on desperate blaze of glory.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Flamecache Gecko

FromTheShire: Another really great aggro piece. Easier to caste than Burning-Tree Emissary and also lets you filter through the lands you don’t to find your finishers.

Marcy: Important to remember that there is a Lizard that deals damage on Landfall triggers, so even just from that, there’s a lot of synergy in the Typal set to work; Lizard Rakdos is one of the few typal decks that seems to have some legs for variable play.

BPhillipYork: This seems built for 4-of aggro red, since you can dump 2 or 3 of them on turn 2. For Commander it’s not worth it, unless you’re setting up some trick to generate infinite mana by flickering it.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Heartfire Hero

FromTheShire: Damn this card is good. Comes down on 1, gets targeted on turn 2 to start growing, and when they have to deal with it as it grows huge it still domes them anyway. Outstanding.

Marcy: An obvious auto-include in current RDW in Standard, also works exceptionally well in Boros and Mouse Typal. Really just a powerful card that gets very scary, especially if you fling it at something.

BPhillipYork:  Fun card for like Zada, Hedron Grinder type decks, hilarious payoff at the end if someone dares blow it up. You probably want to keep a sacrifice outlet around if you’re prepping this sort of thing as this makes for a good target for a Swords to Plowshares to prevent the death effect from happening.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Hearthborn Battler

Marcy: Pretty whatever ability. A lot of times people just play around these types of things, or just ignore the 2 damage to do something more important; it hasn’t seen a lot of play in the Lizard decks I’ve seen either.

BPhillipYork: Neat. This is a great group slug effect, and in my opinion the best kind of group slug effect because it’s not so powerful it absolutely has to be removed, and it’s being triggered off everyone which is potentially really nasty. Potentially dealing 8 damage per turn is really pretty strong.

FromTheShire: In Commander you’re likely to trigger this pretty often, not a bad inclusion for group slug decks but there are better ones as well.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Hired Claw

FromTheShire: Nice that this doesn’t have to attack itself in order to get the trigger, and it’s perfect for triggering all of the things in the Lizard deck that key off of your opponent losing life even if you can’t connect in combat. You’ll definitely have times with the spare mana to grow it as well.

Marcy: If we look a few cards above, this is very indicative of how Lizard decks have myriad ways of pinging or dealing direct damage to opponents without having to over commit to attacks.

BPhillipYork: Well this is probably good in 4-of aggro but not Commander.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Manifold Mouse

FromTheShire: Stop me if you’ve heard me gushing about this card already, this is a certified banger. It targets to trigger all of your valiant effects, and both of the keywords it hands out are excellent for an aggro deck. It even scales somewhat due to the offspring ability, letting you give both abilities to your nastiest threat.

Marcy: Even if you don’t cast it for the Offspring cost, this card is still insanely powerful, just giving itself one of the two abilities can make it win on its own, and if you do get the trigger, having multiple of them is very scary.

BPhillipYork: I think the strongest target for this effect is either a changeling or Whiskervale Forerunner, this link will show you all the mice for your, I guess, mice typal deck. The support just really isn’t there for this, https://scryfall.com/search?q=type%3Amouse+%28game%3Apaper%29&order=cmc&as=grid but it’s fine if you want to make an aggro mouse deck. If you actually win a Commander game with 22 mice (there’s a color identity problem) I’d applaud you.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Season of the Bold

Marcy: Another card that I had no idea it existed; at 5 mana, for 3 options that don’t basically include ‘win the game’ in Red, this card sure does exist, I guess.

BPhillipYork: As a finisher for red this is okay but probably too expensive. If for some reason you really need 5 Treasure for next turn it’s not so bad, the theory is probably you’d use modes 3 and 2 to cast 2 more spells dealing 2 damage off of each, but since mode 3 is to creatures, it’s just not really popping as anything particularly impactful. Especially when to really do anything with it you’d need to have a lot of mana lying around. The one comedy option I can see is using this with Brash Taunter or an analog to absolutely hammer your opponents.

FromTheShire: I think this is the worst of the Season cycle. If the 3 pawprints mode hit opponents you might have something to work with for spellslinger decks so your instant and sorcery tutors could find you a win condition but only hitting creatures means why bother.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Stormsplitter

FromTheShire: It’s a little hard to get going at 4 mana but it doesn’t take too many spells for this to become lethal if you untap with it. Alternatively go the Against the Odds route and pair it with Insidious Roots to let all of your token copies tap for mana, making this pretty much instantly lethal.

Marcy: Far too expensive to do much of anything in Standard, since Otter Typal already struggles, and this card lacks Prowess, so instead you’re just getting… more 1/4s, that don’t really do anything.

BPhillipYork: Not worth it for a 1/4, unless you’re sacrificing them to an altar or something.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Sunspine Lynx

FromTheShire: Aggressive body, great abilities, useful creature types… what’s not to love here? Turning off damage prevention isn’t frequently a thing you need to worry about but it certainly does come up. On the other hand, people are gaining life left and right and being able to turn that off is super useful, plus in a Commander game you can be dinging people for 5-10 damage on entry no problem.

Marcy: This feels like an incredibly mean card for Commander, considering how heavily that format relies on nonbasics.

BPhillipYork: Well that is a lot of effects packed into an sort of efficient 4 mana package. If there were more “everyone gains” red effects to negate this would be worth building around, as it is it’s fine if you have some synergy but good players are rarely gaining life or preventing damage in Commander, those effects don’t make you win the game, they prevent you from losing it.

FromTheShire: That’s true of cEDH tables but in regular games you are definitely going to see a lot of life gain decks, even if it’s just incidental. Dedicated life gain decks are generally bad but if you’re gaining life as a rider on something you want to be doing anyway it’s actually quite good.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Valley Flamecaller

FromTheShire: This seems like it’s showing up mostly in the actual Lizard deck even though it supports other creature types, and it’s great. Lizards have a bunch of ways to throw damage around like Iridescent Vinelasher, and this immediately doubles the effectiveness of them in addition to making you hit harder in combat.

Marcy: This is pretty strong, unlike a lot of the other typal 3 costs, and that’s mostly because Lizards like this ability since many of them have the ability to ping for 1, which now becomes 2, and considering Landfall is a very readily available way to make that damage happen, that can be anywhere from 2 to 4 damage a turn just off another creature and then playing a land.

BPhillipYork:  Otter appears to be a relatively strong creature type, sort of a prowess, non-creature spell benefiting theme there, and Lizards have been around for a while (isn’t a dragon a type of lizard, technically?).  Kind of funny with things like Coruscation Mage, but generally this effect isn’t really moving the needle all that much.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Fecund Greenshell

Marcy: While this may seem like a card that relies on playing lopsided toughness creatures, it really doesn’t need you to do so; you can just play multiples of this turtle and do a lot of work with it. I’ve seen it enable some pretty nasty deck thinning and flips into winning plays. Also worth noting that Sheoldred, who is still very much in Standard, is 4/5, and works pretty well with this card.

BPhillipYork: Pretty funny for defender type decks, especially Arcades, the Strategist decks, and those decks have enough redundancy that it’s no longer just “well remove the commander”. This will ramp you pretty aggressively from 5 to 10 lands most likely, but usually the concern is getting to 5 lands, and if your deck really needs 10 lands in play to function, that’s a real problem (unless they are mazes).

FromTheShire: Very solid ramp piece for Arcades and Doran, the Siege Tower decks with the upside of handing out a decent little buff later in the game.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

For the Common Good

FromTheShire: Sorcery speed is not great but I still kind of like this card. Ideally you want to be dumping in a whole bunch of mana to copy some kind of scary token, possibly with a doubler or two out since your deck cares about tokens so much, you gain a bunch of life and then dare the table to kill you through your indestructible army before you untap again and win the game. It’s the most telegraphed thing in the world but it seems fun.

Marcy: I assume this is for some sort of token combo but the Sorcery speed does make it a little dubious; that said, I am sure there is some Commander deck that is really excited for this card.

BPhillipYork: A neat use for this is probably copying an offspring token with a useful trigger repeatedly, which could get fairly unpleasant, though it’s 3 mana for 1, 5 for 2, 7 for 3, which is a lot to get some tokens onto the board. Giving indestructible is neat, except it is sorcery, and so you can’t react to protect, which would make this card much more reasonable.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Honored Dreyleader

FromTheShire: One heck of a beater for Squirrel decks, the trample is what makes it.

Marcy: Well, I mean, Squirrel decks come get your Squirrel ETB. I kind of like it for the sense that a lot of Squirrel decks don’t really try to ‘win’ by combat but instead through usually token shenanigans, so it is kind of fun to think of this as an alternative condition.

BPhillipYork: I have a squirrel deck and this does nothing for me. Absolutely nothing.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Innkeeper’s Talent

Marcy: If you haven’t seen it, this card is currently part of a Vraska combo in which you play this, get it to Level 3, and then play Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting">Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting and instantly win the game by giving your opponent 18 poison counters. Extremely fun and interactive Magic, but at least isn’t quite as bad as some other non-interactive combos.

BPhillipYork: For 7 mana you get diet Doubling Season. Okay well Doubling Season is a way overplayed overcost effect generally, unless you’re winning the game with it. Ask me about insta-ulting Tamiyo, Field Researcher. The 2 cost getting a +1/+1 at the start of combat is okay if you doing like a proliferate thing and need to get +1/+1 counters onto things to proliferate them. Ward 1 is actually pretty nice all around, for only 1 more mana. A nice value piece for +1/+1 token decks, and then modal upside of diet Doubling Season late game is fine for sort of durdle games.

FromTheShire: Not wildly powerful but certainly useful in the first two levels. The third puts you into game winning shenanigans territory such as the aforementioned Vraska combo, quite good.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Keen-Eyed Curator

Marcy: I guess maybe this is good in Limited? Maybe? I don’t know. It certainly isn’t very good in Standard.

BPhillipYork: This is going to be strong for anti-mill in Standard. In Commander I don’t think it really does anything unless you really need graveyard hate.

FromTheShire: The rate is solid, it can grow later in the game, and graveyard hate is always useful to have in your deck. The problem is Raccoons are currently not good in either Standard or Commander so this doesn’t have a deck to slot into.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Lumra, Bellow of the Woods

FromTheShire: This is one of the cards people have been most hyped about since spoiler season, and not without reason. Vigilance and reach are both underrated abilities, and once you slap trample on because c’mon, you’re in green, this is one hell of a problem for the table. There are a whole bunch of decks that like doing land shenanigans and this is excellent in basically all of them. Even in aggressive self mill decks this can get you back those 8-10 lands you dumped into your yard which is quite the ramp spell.

BPhillipYork: Well. This effect has been around forever, like, since Gaea’s Liege in Alpha which is not really good but kind of potentially impressive. If you wanted to do a kind of funny deck I guess you could run all 6 or so of them. Okay that’s just bad. Nevermind this is bad unless you’re doing some thing where you really care about returning all your lands to play.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Mistbreath Elder

Marcy: So a really important thing about this card is to read it very carefully, as it is not a MAY trigger. You MUST return another creature, even if you do not want to. The thing about that trigger is that the second part of the card sounds like ‘well I’ll do that instead,’ but no, you HAVE to return something if there is a legal target, and then if not, you MAY return this card instead. Still, can be very useful in Frog decks if you use the trigger effectively.

BPhillipYork: This does nothing for me. Bounce ETB effect creatures? Sure, okay.

FromTheShire: Theoretically a cheap piece to rebuy your creatures in the Frog deck. The only problem is the frog deck is also pretty fringe in terms of playability.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Pawpatch Recruit

Marcy: Oddly, a lot of the Rabbit decks I’ve seen don’t bother with pump spells or other “target creature” abilities, so this card really hasn’t popped up very much. Which is kind of a shame, since I think this card is kind of neat.

BPhillipYork: Not sufficiently impactful for Commander, unless you have a deep need to piss off and frustrate new players who don’t understand how the stack works, and really, don’t be that guy.

FromTheShire: Again in theory this is a cheap, aggressive creature with trample that grows your team if they remove your threats which seems pretty decent. The issue is that the Rabbit decks go so wide AND so tall so fast that when it works you’re killing them through their removal, and if you’re stumbling this doesn’t do enough to pull the game back in your favor.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Scrapshooter

Marcy: The biggest thing working in this card’s favor at the moment is that a lot of artifact and enchantment removal got rotated out, but what is working against this card it is is a fairly expensive, non-instant removal that gives your opponent a card, and then possibly dies to removal or gets countered.

BPhillipYork: It’s okay if you are desperate for removal I guess, especially since you can gift the card to someone in last place and blow up something important.

FromTheShire: Another victim of the Raccoon deck not materializing.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Season of Gathering

Marcy: At 6 mana this is quite expensive, but has decent value in terms of what you could do with it; you could, for example, pay 4 to destroy all enchantments AND artifacts, and have 1 leftover for a counter to a creature.

BPhillipYork: Clear all artifacts and enchantments is okay, for 6 mana, I guess. There’s plenty of better ways to draw cards equal to the power of a creature all over green, much cheaper or with better flexible modalities.

FromTheShire: Pretty decent, there are definitely times you will benefit from being able to sweep either artifacts or enchantments or both, or draw a whole bunch of cards. Vigilance and trample is pretty useful to hand out to punch through one person’s defenses while also hanging back to block the remaining player when you’re trying to close out a game as well.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Tender Wildguide

Marcy: I actually forgot Possums were even in this set.

BPhillipYork: It’s fine as like, a mana dork that can put +1/+1 counters, this is an enabler for a deck that leverages those counters in some way and then you can pay 4 mana to get 2 of them, which is fine.

FromTheShire: Seems to be mostly a mana dork with upside for the big mana decks.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Thornvault Forager

Marcy: Seems like a mana dork made specifically for Squirrel Commander decks, with an added flavor of deck searching.

BPhillipYork: Squirrel tutor is pretty sweet, really nice that it’s a mana dork early and also fixes. Very utilitarian card for Squirrel decks, also for any kind of shapeshifter deck, especially if you need to fetch a specific one.

FromTheShire: Stapling a tutor onto your mana dork is great.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Valley Mightcaller

Marcy: At 1 mana, this card has popped up in a lot of Rabbit decks as well as Frog decks, because it grows extremely fast and becomes a problem almost instantly.

BPhillipYork: No. Not in commander.

FromTheShire: This is probably the 1 drop you want to be playing instead of Pawpatch Recruit, it grows much faster and more consistently.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Heirloom Epic

Marcy: Extremely cute card art, at least!

BPhillipYork: Well for a go very wide deck this is a fine way to draw a card every turn as you build up your army.

FromTheShire: Solid card draw for token decks.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Patchwork Banner

FromTheShire: 3 mana rocks need to do something pretty good these days, and having a whole ass anthem effect for that extra mana definitely qualifies. Can immediately slot into any tribal deck.

BPhillipYork: Another anthem that’s also a mana rock is neat for typal decks.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Lupinflower Village

Marcy: Of these lands, this is probably one of the worst.

BPhillipYork: All of these non-basic lands that enter untapped and only tap for colorless or their normal color and then have a an ability. It’s neat, though it definitely feels like these will get overplayed because people will focus on the upside and ignore downsides (vulnerability to non-basic hate). Are you really ever going to want to sacrifice a land to get one of those creature types? If so, run it. But do you want your land locked out, or turned into a mountain or an island?

FromTheShire: Probably doesn’t hurt to have 1 or 2 in the relevant creature decks for later in the game. Coming in untapped means the opportunity cost is fairly low.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Lilypad Village

Marcy: This might be the second worst.

BPhillipYork: Wooh a cycle where the blue card is arguably the strongest. Who’d’ve thunk it. Well, I would’ve; but I was wrong, it’s the red one.

FromTheShire: The surveil is really useful; unfortunately the named creature types kind of aren’t at the moment outside or Birds and Rats in Commander. Having to have them enter this turn is a definite downside as well.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Mudflat Village

Marcy: You can at least activate this at the end of an opponent’s turn, or even on your own, if you really needed something back right away.

BPhillipYork: Returning a Squirrel can be quite useful, though sacrificing a land to do it will typically be fairly painful. There’s also some interesting Rats, so this is seems like a useful inclusion in certain decks.

FromTheShire: Getting back your best creature when you need it late game is pretty solid.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Rockface Village

Marcy: For only a single red mana, this little card can suddenly win you the game; this is the one I’ve seen quite a lot.

BPhillipYork: Yeah haste is important for hitting right away, so this is a solid include especially if your commander is one of those creatures types or you have a really important creature you will want to tutor up and haste.

FromTheShire: Hands down the best one of the lot, haste is extremely good for aggro decks.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Oakhollow Village

Marcy: If you were running a big token generation engine, this could certainly make the case for being in your deck; a single green for a lot of counters on a ton of Squirrels seems good.

BPhillipYork: I guess Frogs and Rabbits and Raccoons and Squirrels are all about the +1/+1 tokens, and that’s fine if that is what you want.

FromTheShire: Pretty good if you have this and another land free when you cast your Hop to It, less good when it’s only giving 1 counter.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Fountainport

Marcy: Ironically a card that pre-rotation Blue-White would have loved, this is making a lot of appearances in many slower, control style decks for sure.

BPhillipYork: Well sacrifice a token and draw a card is useful if the game is stalling, and the ability to also create tokens is pretty solid all in one package. Useful for some kind of lockdown deck or stax deck which everyone will hate. You’re probably not very often going to actually tap a land and pay 4 additional mana to create a Treasure, there’s no ROI there.

FromTheShire: Reminiscent of a Trading Post or Staff of Domination, though obviously weaker than either. Mostly seems like something that will appear in Standard control decks.

 

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Three Tree City

FromTheShire: Another one of the most hyped cards, and again for a good reason. This is an immediate auto-include in every single tribal deck. While it is not always going to make massive mana like Gaea’s Cradle, the potential is certainly there, and the opportunity costs is close to 0. Tribal decks are wildly popular so hope you cracked one from a pack cause this isn’t dropping in price for a long, long time. Probably not until it sees a reprint honestly.

Marcy: I did not even know this card existed, which tells you that no one is currently using it in Standard.

BPhillipYork: This is going to be way overplayed because people love typal decks, but it’s pretty strong for those sorts of decks in all honesty. Pays off at 4 creatures, which if you are running a deck that focuses on one creature type should be trivial to pull off. For things like goblins or elves this could get truly gross. This is like budget Gaea’s Cradle and will be played as such, and it’s fine in that role. It’s truly about comparable to the Cabal Coffers and Cabal Stronghold comparison. The amount the first one is stronger than the second is truly staggering.

 

That wraps up our look at the set’s monocolor cards, join us next time as we start to look at the Commander decks that released alongside the set!

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