Ixalan In Review

Ixalan has now been fully spoiled! New cards! New deck potential! Things!

As always, I’m only going to really focus on the things I want to talk about and that means most cards get ignored because so what. The majority of cards are for people who aren’t me, like all the limited cards.

I’ll be looking at cards in terms of if I want to play with it or get a set or copy of them, and that means cards that I can see using in a multiple different decks or in one deck a few different ways, or, crucially, cards I expect will be pretty cheap.

The Obligatory Duals!

Duals! Rather than add to the ever burgeoning mass of existing dual lands available in the greater environment Wizards opted this time to reprint a cycle of existing ally-colour dual lands that are pretty dang good. They work best in decks which aren’t soaking in dual lands – which means they tend to be a good smoother in a two-colour deck or a handy assistance in a three colour deck.

White Card

I don’t personally plan on playing with the Vampires of Ixalan, because those folk are dinks, but this is still a pretty robust creature card. It’s done a lot to make its design forgiveable; second copies of the card aren’t wastes, but they also don’t result in overwhelming board states. The card you get out of it is very nice (and trust me, tokens with lifelink are way more annoying than you might think), but if you draw a second copy you’re not stuck with a dead draw.

Also, you’re only getting 1/1 dorks so it’s not like you’re overwhelming anyone with these terribly powerful cards. I can see this maybe having a home in a strategy that doesn’t want to play any creature cards and just use these kinds of cards to generate a board presence.

That’s it for white?

Really?

Phew.

Blue Cards

Really, like, what does this get you? When you think about it at its root, really, what does it do for your deck that something else doesn’t do better?

One of the common examples of what you can do with this kind of mechanical effect is to make all your creatures Slivers, so they can all benefit from the huge variety of abiliites available to Slivers. That card exists, it’s called [mtg_card]hivestone[/mtg_card], and in constructed it’s a bit of a joke because really you can just play lots of Slivers instead.

Here’s a good metric: Can this card ever, on its own, be as useful for your gameplan as [mtg_card]Glorious Anthem[/mtg_card]? Glorious Anthem isn’t even an amazing effect. Now, these questions aren’t meant to just be No Fun Nelly – it’s the core of a game plan question. Is there a board state you can get, a board state which is reasonably agnostic to your opponents, where this card can come down and win you the game on the spot? Some sort of [mtg_card]Solemnity[/mtg_card] back-pocket trick?

It’s nice that this effect is cheaper, now, mind you.

In Vintage there was this deck called Fish which relied on putting on small, cheap threats – Merfolk, hence the name ‘Fish’ – that could win the game attacking while you defended your board position and prevented your opponent from their gameplan. Fish is a deck I liked, and it’s more or less known as the archetype of Delver these days, because a 3/2 flier is a lot better than a 1/1 islandwalker. This creature here looks a lot like a Standard version of a Fish card.

And it’s not a Fish.

Dagnabbit.

I immediately went looking for a Blue version of [mtg_card]Whitemane Lion[/mtg_card], and the closest you get to that is [mtg_card]Darting Merfolk[/mtg_card]. Not exactly a world-beater. This is a card that isn’t going to present threat on its own, but rather amplify the threat of other cards you make – effectively giving creatures you control +1/+1 when you play them.

That’s, like, nice? But again, it’s not much better than a Glorious Anthem. Without more ways to amplify them, this is just a way to further reward a sprawl onto the battlefield. That’s why I want ways to trigger it with minimal card investment: I want this card to do more work than just giving me say, 2 1/1s. It benefits a swarm strategy, which is just not the kind of thing you’re going to want to see in a world with…

like, we’ll get to it in Green, but yeah I think it’s going to push people towards white control.

Stick with [mtg_card]Metallurgic Summonings[/mtg_card]!

 

Sigh, fine, I guess this is the Fish they want, now. If this gets thrown alongside Deeproot Waters, it might attack as a 3/3 unblockable, which is kind of cute. It’s not the thing I think of when I think of a merfolk creature for a merfolk deck, but… y’know. Fine.

I do love the visuals though! This is a pretty sweet type of aesthetic for a merfolk.

Just

y’know, okay, fine.

Oh what c’mon? This is a pirate? Pirates have a thing! Pirates steal stuff, pirates change who they are, pirates get information and draw cards – heck, what about [mtg_card]Coastal Piracy[/mtg_card] (a card that strangely, isn’t in the set)? But this creature is pretty much exactly what I think of as a good example of a merfolk creature, and it’s… it’s

not a merfolk.

I guess pirates needed the push.

Anyway, don’t forget that this critter can counter a couple of Planeswalker ultimates.

Black Cards

This card reminds me most of [mtg_card]Raiders’ Spoils[/mtg_card] – a card I wanted to make work but never got there on. This is a pretty sweet little card, particularly because you can get value out of it immediately with creatures that are durable even if they’re not evasive. It also bears more than a passing resemblance ot a card I love, [mtg_card]Nezumi Shortfang[/mtg_card] – nibbling at your opponent’s hand and killing them in the process.

Wait is that the only black c- oh! Oh hey wait also,

Yeah this ain’t strong. I’m a fan of this kind of card, small cheap creatures who late-game can do something, but this one just… doesn’t seem to do much beyond trigger Raid. Which isn’t bad, really! You could do worse than lead with this. Problem is it’s a really weird deck that can look at that 8 mana cost and say well this isn’t blank text.

I mean, it’s a Sealed deck, really.

Red Cards

My only real interest in this kind of card right now is as a way to trigger Enrage, and while this might lead to some odd mixed pirate-dragon deck where this card will blow up your opponent’s stuff and leave your Dinos enraged and your pirates unscathed, it seems thatit’s probably best to just not bother including the pirates and run [mtg_card]Sweltering Suns[/mtg_card] instead.

Okay now this is interesting. I’m not wild about it,because on its own it doesn’t do anything, but there are a lot of possible applications of it. Note that it won’t get you attack triggers – it’s already attacking by that point – but it can do things like copy [mtg_card]Exemplar of Strength[/mtg_card] and serve alongside it for a full 4 on turn 3.

How hecking rough has this been that I couldn’t find more than five cards to talk about between three of the colours.

Green Cards!

How big and dumb do you have to be to deform an environment? This big and dumb! Putting the uncontroversial opinion out there that any midrange or control deck is going to cap out its mana curve on a Carnage Tyrant, and in so doing, the Standard environment is going to be a place with a lot more [mtg_card]Fumigate[/mtg_card]s in it.

These two cards are just fairly typical, useful green cards. I don’t honestly expect to play with them in Standard coming up, since I personally really like [mtg_card]Nature’s Wrath[/mtg_card]? But that’s all I got.

Awww it has to tap.  This was real close to being the kind of bear I really love. Seems not.

 

Hey! Designers! Check this out, this is is important stuff! See that reminder text? It’s a big deal. Reminder text is a way the game can communicate meaningful information to players in plain-text language that those players get that isn’t even necessarily ‘useful game text.’

Hey look at that big ole lummox.I dig this beasty and I think I’ll happily jam it into a green-base EDH deck or the like with a card like [mtg_card]Chord of Calling[/mtg_card] to summon it up, then pump mana into it to take over a previously contested board state. Still, looks kinda unnecessary in a 60-card deck.

Here’s what I personally consider the best green card in the set, or rather, the card in the set I’m most likely to put time and effort into making it work and letting it do things. Thing with this critter is two spells and it’s fine. One spell and it’s okay, two and it’s fine, three spells and it’s great, and I’m an absolute sucker for cards that have a lot of what Mike Flores once called velocity.

Deeproot Champion is a card that makes me think of Miracle Gro, and that means I’m going to try to make it work, in the tradition of [mtg_card]Witch-Maw Nephilim[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Vinelasher Kudzu[/mtg_card].

Woop woop. Okay, remember how I talked about Explore as filtering? This is a really great Explore card. This card makes Coiling Oracle look pretty unimpressive, since even without the counter-and-draw, it hits meaningfully hard and it’ll trade with a variety of creatures that are more expensive than it.

I like it but… fine? I guess? I guess. I think there’s a missing chunk of flavour with the Merfolk. Or maybe there’s just a missing deck with the Merfolk. All it seems they want to do is attack Pretty Decently for their mana cost, and … and that’s all?

I don’t mind this creature at all and I’ll probably run it in that Gro-like I wind up making, but… god, it feels like there’s just nothing there.

 

And here we have my pick for probably the rare that’s going to slot nicely into my sweet spot. It’s going to sell for a fraction of a dollar on MTGO, but you will be able to play a deck using it – even as just a loner! – as a playset in a variety of different ways. It’s big enough to hold the ground and win fights against aggro decks, and doing so will draw you cards. It’s cheap enough you can use it to top out an aggro deck.

It’s hard to block profitably, it can even make some of your area damage spells into cantrips – it’s good. It’s just really good. I will play this in a lot of different mid-range decks, projecting if this creature ever eats one creature in combat, it’s put me up a card and we’re good. More is gravy.

Gold Cards!

Let me point out what every other commander player is pointing out, that this creature costs seven mana and has to stack up alongside [mtg_card]Prime Speaker Zegana[/mtg_card]. I do feel that. I get it. There’s a lot there. Those two cards will probably occupy a lot of similar decks but I think as far as reloading your hand goes in the wrath-happy world of Commander, is more likely to be about one big topdeck turning into a handful of cards, instead of a sprawl of still-alive creature turning into a big handful of cards. Maybe we’ll see more token generators, but I’m really not expecting it.

I don’t think this is going to be playable at all in Standard though because what kind of creature can it possibly be that matters? You don’t need 9/9s in Standard.

I just want to point out this is 3/3, a 4/4 and a 5-drop.

Otherwise, yeah whatever. Look at that big ole critter. I’m not actually a fan – I dislike the fact that part of this creature has haste, and it’s only just a big donk – one mana more gets you Carnage Tyrant that does a lot more to make blocking hard for your opponent after all.

Normally, a creature that brings a token lets you benefit from effects that amplify both. My problem here is that I just don’t see this creature being good as the middle of a pack of cards – I’d much rather, if I’m going to play it, for this to be the top of it – and it creates a token that dies to Sweltering Suns.

And finally here we have a card with a printing error – the card’s text is ‘exile another target artifact or creature’. That printing error was the subject of much conversation until I noticed, hang on, this creature is bananas. It’s a 4 mana kill spell that draws you a card, and you can even choose what that card is and the card you draw might be really freaking cool.

Don’t think of this as a card to play on 4, by the way, because it’s a creature with 3 toughness. I think of this as a creature you play with a [mtg_card]Negate[/mtg_card] as backup. What you want to do, really, is when your opponent drops a five, use this to remove it with countermagic cover, counter their attempt to kill the Hostage Taker, then you untap and cast the card you stole. There’s a sequence with this that involves [mtg_card]Glorybringer[/mtg_card] and it’s totally sweet that is exactly awful if the Glorybringer comes down after the Hostage Taker instead of before it.

Wrapping Up

I don’t want to sound like I’m unhappy with Ixalan, because Ixalan looks really cool and good. But it feels like Ixalan is a set that’s a lot like Kamigawa; a powerful flavour and thematic sinew holds it together, tribes that are interested in one another and missing crucial pieces to make everything feel that tight.

I think the best way to summarise this is that Ixalan has some fun cards in it, and it’ll have some fun decks played in it, but I don’t feel like anything in Ixalan is going to jump into other decks and make new things with old cards. You’ll see lone cards show up, role players and tools, but there’s no real synthesis of two sets together.

Still, if this is the Next Masques, it’s the best Masques ever.