Greetings 7 Point Highlander Players,
This is my Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty set review. There's a lot going on this set. It has a Timespiral level of wordiness and complexity.
THEMES
- Enchantments matter
We haven't seen an enchantment theme deck top8 a major event yet as far as I know. Surely this set will be a set towards that. - Artifacts matter
Artifacts recently got two of their best cards: Urza's Saga and Nettlecyst; and now they get another artifact set? Unreal. - Reconfigure (equipment)
Highlander has the ridiculous Skullclamp and Umezawa's Jitte, and therefore Stoneforge Mystic and Steelshapers Gift too. An issue with the tutors is what to find once Jitte and Clamp are used up, especially if you've run out of creatures to attach them to. The living weapon mechanic, notably Batterskull is an example of a popular solution to this issue. Reconfigure gives additional options in this space. - +1/+1 counters
Every set seems to bring some decent +1/+1 counter cards. Surely Hardened Scales will break through eventually. - Sagas
Creatures and sorceries masquerading as enchantments. Sagas give enchantment strategies extra utility. They are also a much needed source of enchantments in the graveyard for Delirium strategies. - Ninjitsu
Modern Horizons-1 and Commander 2018 gave us a few good ninjas but perhaps not enough to make it a full strategy. Kamigawa should provide the critical mass of ninjas required. On the other hand, ninjas work best when they're least expected, I think ninjas are most effective as a sub-strategy. - Channel (the mechanic)
Nearly uncounterable. Opportunity to cheat on mana costs in cascade decks or maybe even Keruga, the Macrosage :P - Vehicles
Naturally aggressive card type that nombos with haste creatures, therefore doesn't see much play. I would be happy with some pushed vehicles.
- Spirits
Spirit tribal. I keep saying it. Gotta build it too. This set doesn't have payoffs for being spirit tribal but there's likely some strong spirits.
In general there are a lot of creature from non-creature sources, e.g. tokens and sagas flipping, which opens up powerful cardtype abusement.
MAINDECK
I think this is the best card in the set. Lion Sash is a must-kill threat. Fetchland mana bases provide plenty of fuel for growth. It gets bigger than everything on board.
~ is incidental graveyard hate, which is good for the format: it can prevent some of the format's best threats: Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, Murktide Regent, Etheral Forager, Lurrus of the Dream-Den, Klothys, God of Destiny, Deathrite Shaman, Tarmogoyf, Dragon's Rage Channeler and Dreadhorde Arcanist, to name many.
~ is also quite tutorable with Steelshaper's Gift and Stoneforge Mystic.
~ is also quite tutorable with Steelshaper's Gift and Stoneforge Mystic.
Null Rod et al turn off ~, so you probably want to board ~ out if you're boarding those cards in.
~ is the best cat ever printed. I built a cat tribal deck to jam against new players in my town, but ~ might make the deck too good for that role haha.
Exile really shines against bullshit like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, Underworld Breach and Time Vault, i.e. things that opponents are planning to recur.
It's poor against Murktide Regent but exiling your hand is better than dying in two hits.
Lifelink is surprisingly good, especially when you're equipping with a big Lion Sash.
Could be good in 'Eggs' combo where you use Lotus Bloom, Lotus Petal and Black Lotus to generate mana and cast Second Sunrise and Open the Vaults to bring them the artifacts back in addition to a bunch of namesake eggs: Sungrass Egg, Skycloud Egg, etc, which will ideally draw you into the next 'return all' sorcery.
The ability isn't really relevant but the artifact supertype is. This is decent in White artifact aggro where you're trying to maximise Mox Opal, Toolcraft Exemplar, Urza's Saga, Ingenious Smith and Cranial Plating. I think this deck would be a Lurrus deck too. Obviously you would run Lion Sash as well.
Being an artifact deck, you should prioritise anti Null Rod cards for your limited nonartifact slots.
Decent in artifact aggro. That deck wants to maximise cheap artifact fliers to ensure you can hit with ~ and Cranial Plating.
If there is eventually a Bogles deck, ~ would be in it and you would probably run Robe of Mirrors to protect her.
You need some serious synergy to make him a good boy:
This card is significantly worse without the basic plains, and to almost guarantee that you still have a basic plains to search I think you need to run 3 minimum.
I'm very far behind on my set reviews, so far behind that someone has already won the biggest paper Highlander tournament ever with a card before I even reviewed it, i.e. Dylan Kidd and The Wandering Empereror respectively. Although, Dylan could be a Wandering Emperor, but I doubt he would say so if he was. He did a little tournament report, which includes his and others' decklists.
There's nothing worth it now but in the future they could print some ridiculous living weapon equipment or some gigantic vehicle which creates tokens to crew itself à la Esika's Chariot.
Worse than Metallic Rebuke but you can run both.
Colourless producing Springleaf Drum that also tap artifacts.
Being an artifact deck, you should prioritise anti Null Rod cards for your limited nonartifact slots.
There are a few problems with Bogles:
- Not enough cheap hexproof dudes:
Gladecover Scout
Slippery Bogle
Bassara Tower Archer
Invisible Stalker
Silhana Ledgewalker - The deck is too slow to race combo and therefore needs disruption but there aren't many disruptive auras.
- You need to draw a good mix of lands, a hexproof dude, auras and disruption, which is made harder by opposing disruption like Thoughtseize et al.
Fuel for Enigmatic Incarnation
Banks mana for Food Chain
Holds equipment...
I think you need to be doing one or more of the above things and also run Yorion as your companion.The second trigger is excellent for decks which consistently find high-value permanents like Serra's Sanctum, Time Vault, Urza's Saga, Skullclamp, etc. Unfortunately Lurrus of the Dream-Den does a much better job at bringing those back than ~ does yet they won't be in the same 75.
If there is a ≤2 mana permanent that can repeatedly remove a counter from ~ on each of your turns, then there's some value to be had, same goes for all the sagas. Hex Parasite perhaps, or Power Conduit.
All the sagas in this set are good with Felidar Guardian and anything else that exiles or bounces enchantments, so that you can get all the chapter triggers again.
I haven't played with or against ~ yet but a few people have adopted her. If you're entering combat and your opponent has 4 mana open, beware.
Spell Pierce is a maindeck card in most of the top blue decks. A big part of its popularity is the blowouts you can get countering relatively expensive planeswalkers; ~ having Flash effectively makes Spell Pierce cost an extra U because presumably the opponent held up Spell Pierce the turn before as well.
A long time ago when Sensei's Divining Top was zero points and the format was much slower, Trinket Mage was in every blue deck as a value creature. This made combat-reliant creatures unplayable if they simply traded with Trinket Mage, i.e. a 2/2. Realistically this filter is already absolute but The Wandering Emperor does contribute to it.
I think your 4 drops need to either do a lot of damage really fast, e.g. Questing Beast, or they need to disrupt the opponent, e.g. Jace, the Mind Sculptor. The Wandering Emporer doesn't really do either of those, therefore to make her work the rest of your deck needs to be disruption heavy, or you need to dodge combo all day.
I like this in decks designed to abuse certain powerful instants, e.g. Ancestral Recall, Flash (+Protean Hulk/Worldspine Wurm), Tainted Pact/Demonic Consultation (+Thassa's Oracle/Jace, Weilder of Mysteries). Having a few powerful instants is not enough though because you might whiff on your top 5 cards. You also need >12 decent instants to hit otherwise. For that reason ~ is suited to control decks which run counterspells.
The most recent points change combined with the 8-point accessibility rule has re-enabled Flash + Protean Hulk with a Thassa's Oracle kill and access to Tainted Pact. Admittedly I haven't looked into this yet. I'm currently preparing for the ANZ Super Series, which is Pioneer, so I won't be spending any time brewing Highlander (except for writing these set reviews I guess) until after November. Late December into January is my favourite time of the year; Not because of Christmas but because I get leave from work and because there are two major annual Highlander events for me: Moxing Day at Maze of Fitzroy in Melbourne, and Highlander Nationals at CanCon in Canberra. So early December I'll definitely be investigating if I can create a UB/UBx mana base without dual lands (8-point rule) and also without more than two basics of a colour (Tainted Pact means you can only have a Snow-Covered and a regular basic).
Very niche card, artifact control. Perhaps control with a Time Vault kill. Perhaps use counterspells as a way to protect Lurrus of the Dream-Den and then generate card advantage with baubles and eggs.
White, Black and Red decks have better removal but this is a solid option if you aren't those colours.
It's a 5mana blue spell so it's going to get Red Elemental Blasted occaissionally and you'll lose, but if your deck is mostly blue spells you might have cleared the way already.
One of the big weaknesses of other control magic effects is that all the creatures that are beating you down are probably tapped, so ~ untapping its target is great.
The fact that it can steal artifacts is nice for mono U or UB decks which often can't deal with resolved artifacts.
Good acceleration for unusual artifact decks that run lots of zeros to tap and lots of 1mana artifacts to cast.
Might be good in some weird all-in Skullclamp deck with Kobolds.
A good way of tapping creatures that give value when tapped, e.g. Emmara, Soul of the Accord or Magda, Brazen Outlaw.
Excellent in any heavy artifact strategy with the U mana to cast it but even better if you're running combos.
Lets you have two Tolarian Academy or Serra's Sanctum activations in the one turn for gigantic spikes in mana.
Dies to Wrenn and Six, which is a big risk.
Gives you recurring value by bouncing Urza's Saga back to your hand, and even returns Saga from the yard if it ends up there.
Tameshi is just mega value, gaining you two cards a turn for the cost of returning a land each turn, which is not a big deal if your curve is low.
Tameshi has been underplayed since his printing in my opinion.
Another super strong artifact payoff for blue from this set.
Weird card, very good. It's slow but that's ok because it blocks to help you get into the late game.
If you build around ~ by adding lots of activated abilities to your deck then Tezzeret gets insanely mana efficient.
I like the fact that these super pushed artifacts payoffs that aren't actual artifacts themselves make Mishra's Workshop less appealing, cause that card's expen$ive.
~ ultimates pretty fast wow.
Seeing the top card is good with fetchlands.
Late game The Reality Chip is a must-answer threat. It means that every creature must die or the reality chip must die, otherwise you have a Future Sight and will take over the game.
The Reality Chip is a strong Stoneforge Mystic option.
Legend for Mox Amber.
Decent in artifact aggro. I'm going to rebuild my black artifact aggro deck with Umori as the companion when all the Necrons arrive from the Warhammer 40k commander decks.
This is another cheap demon for Liliana's Contract, which I would to build one day.
The trigger is awesome with Walking Ballista.
Creatures which have removal ETB's are also pretty good at creating boardstates without blockers, so I suppose you can add Flametongue Yearling, Skyclave Apparition and Reflector Mage to that list.
The creatures really want to be ≤3 mana to curve into Nashi the following turn.
I'd say you want at least 11 of these creatures, so we're short.
I think Lurrus should be at least 3 points.
This card is showing up in a lot of formats.
Less good in Highlander because Teferi, Time Raveler and Jace, the Mind Sculptor are popular.
Suited to midrange decks; too slow for aggro decks. Requires that you run some creatures to make Reflection of Kiki-Jiki scary. Creatures are so good these days that every archetype runs them, so that's not a problem.
Ideally you want a low curve so that you can happily discard your lands to the second chapter.
An enchantment for delirium.
Curves will with Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors.
I tried this in my goblin deck and was surprised to find that it wasn't as good as I hoped. The big factor was that it isn't a goblin card which is a nombo with several cards. The goblin deck is also quite low on resources and often can't afford to discard lands because it needs them to get to Muxus.
Good allround card which is technically not a creature so it works for stuff like Indomitable Creativity and Transmogrify.
Good Recurring Nightmare decks because it discards creatures in chapter II and Reflection of Kiki-Jiki can get plenty of value from all the ETB creatures.
I think ~ could be good in a Hardened Scales deck though, with plenty of ways to enable the dragon ability.
if I ever rebuild my old land destruction deck then I'll be looking at ~; casting two Stone Rains is game winning.
The greater X is, the more cards, but you can still only play one land per turn, so it's not linear.
Very strong in artifact stompy. Very scary with Arcbound Ravager. Very scary holding a Jitte or Swords of X and Y. Put it on a Traxos. You get the idea.
Solid beatdown threat for big red with an Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors.
One of the best red 1drops. A huge printing for red aggro, especially mono red which is low on good 1's.
~ requires that you run ≥14 creatures of mana value ≤2 so that you can reliably put that +1/+1 counter on something turn2.
That exile clause can be nice against things like Kitchen Finks.
To give you an idea for how desperate mono red is for good 1drops, I've seen them running this.
I wouldn't have thought it was good enough. I'll have to speak to one of players to see if they're still running it. I suppose you can start buffing your other guys and giving haste once the opponent has a blocker out. Must be good enough.
And it's got a flower in its hair!
Better than Brainstorm for an all-in enchantment deck, but it has to be all-in.
If you're some kind of hybrid then the usual blue suspects are probably better.
Of course you may simply not be playing blue; enchantress is an excellent deck to maindeck Choke after all.
Even if a token dies to a JaceTMS bounce, the other one kills the Jace.
8 power for 5 mana is a lot. Having said that, this is still a niche card. You need a lot of disruption or ramp to cast it fast enough to matter. Also, most green creature decks are looking to diversify their threats, i.e. their mana dorks are weak against sweepers and therefore they want their top-end to be planeswalkers or something that doesn't die to sweepers. Invoke the Ancients still dies to Wrath of God.
Very slow but it is good against removal and has synergy with Hardened Scales, so I can see it being solid in that strategy. The trick is to have the rest of your deck disrupt the opponent and let your midrange cards like this deal with what's left over.
I think you need to be running Time Walk for ~ to be good, and even then you'll need some little side-synergies with legendaries or enchantments or graveyards or special lands. Shouldn't be to hard to find extra synergy, ~ has a lot going on.
There have been plenty of 1mana instants that protect creatures but ~ is a first for non-creature permanents in green. White has had this effect for a while in Blacksmith's Skill and Faith's Shield but not all permanent-based combos are white.
We'll need another Theros or Kamigawa visit before we have enough enchantment creatures to make that static ability powerful.
Nice for protecting Dark Depths/Marit Lage.
~ would be excellent if it weren't for Wrenn and Six. Cheap. Good against removal. Graveyard hate. Gets big, albeit slowly. Fills your graveyard. This card has everything but speed. If a second point goes .on Wrenn and Six I'll eventually add this to a deck.
You'll need a good amount of removal so that the token or ~ can attack consistently. You'll probably be running removal regardless, so that's not really and extra requirement.
Gnarled Scarhide
Kumano Faces Kakkazan
Aegis of the Gods
Aphemia, the Cacophony
Eidolon of Obstruction
Greasefang is a big archetype in Pioneer. Turn 3 bring Parhelion II back from the graveyard then ~ conveniently has 4 power to crew and you smash for 13. In Highlander you can only run one copy of Parhelion II but the new Commander 40k commander decks have produced two more powerful vehicles that are worth Greasefanging: Necron Monolith and Reaver Titan. Both have evasion and both have crew 4 and both hit for enough damage to almost win the game.
Possibly worth playing in the Greasefang deck, but it might just be better to run a land which can become a ≥4 power creature. Great Hall of Starnheim stands out as really good in that role. Nantuko Monastery also noteworthy.
Kind of a Recurring Nightmare for any card type, not just creatures. Of course this happens turn 5 and not turn 3 like it does with Recurring Nightmare, and you can't keep bringing back the same thing, and you can't bring back multiple things in one turn.
Jukai Naturalist
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Spirited Companion
Teachings of the Kirin
Sythis, Harvest's Hand
Tymaret, Chosen from Death
Courser of Kruphix
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
Gloom Shrieker
That copy ability is powerful, double all your saga triggers. As long as you build your deck to have about 13 enchantments with good abilities to copy, then you can jam ~ into your deck. ~ will die on sight most of the time but that's ok, it's only two mana, and if it doesn't die you get value.
To make this all happen you'll want Entomb and ways of discarding big vehicles that you draw.
If your target gets exiled in response to your trigger you can choose not to sacrifice anything, which is nice.
~ being an enchantment means that you'll get a little extra synergy if you're an enchantment deck, e.g. some cost reduction of ~ and the option of saccing itself if you're desperate.
Good in creature combo decks for returning key pieces.
Nice in cascade decks that want to cheat with casting costs to always hit one of the powerful suspend sorceries with no cost. Those decks want Force of Will and Force of Negation to protect their cascade spell from discard so ~ being blue is nice.
The 'exile and create a token' method is clever for preventing loops but potential for abuse such as immediately tokening Spark Double, which is nonlegendary and gets an extra loyalty so you can token Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God, which has Tamiyo's ability so you can token Aminatou, the Fateshifter, which blinks Tamiyo so you can token Felidar Guardian to blink Tamiyo again and token Clever Impersonator copying the non-legendary Spark Double etc etc. Obviously this is a completely ridiculous scenario, but you see what I mean by "potential for abuse".
If you resolve ~ it should win the game, but these days you can say that about a tonne of 5drops let along a WUBRG 6drop like ~. The nice that this might fit into is Jegantha decks with lots of ways of giving Jegantha haste.
Very powerful. It basically gives all your spells madness. Survival of the Fittest can search for it and from there you can cast whatever you discard to Survival. Artificer's Intuition is similar except it can't find ~ itself.
~ lets you cast things you discard to Lion's Eye Diamond.
Lot's of value with any recurring looter like Dack Fayden or Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
Perhaps that could be also be a home for Path of Mettle, which is a card I've always wanted to try.
With Wrenn and Six scaring away all the X/1's despite being a point, perhaps this is not the meta for the proposed deck, but hopefully Wrenn and Six gets a second point soon to give players more freedom with the creatures they can run; then we would need to wait a few months for the meta to adjust and then our Eater of Virtue deck can kick some ass.
If this is in your deck you'll be squeezing in as many ≥3power creatures as possible so if you're playing creatures each turn then this is a 4/4 for 2mana when you're attacking, which is very strong. Heart of Kiran was a staple during its time in standard and it had similar stats.
And not only is ~ a strong vehicle, it can draw cards when you have no crew, overcoming the weakness of the vehicle subtype. Highlander has some good counterspells, so there is a chance that your new crew doesn't even show up, but that card draw ability gives you a consolation.
I would recommend running ~ as an aggressive beater and just consider the card draw ability as something to do in emergencies.
Between fetchlands, dual lands, Cavern of Souls, Unclaimed Territory and now this, 5 colour tribal is not a problem, so you can really go deep finding the best Warriors or Spirits or whatever weird creature type you want to force.
Super strong if you can fulfil both conditions. Artifacts are not a problem but finding on-theme enchantments can be tricky. You'll be able to get away with fewer enchantments if the enchantment itself poses no threat, e.g. Oath of Nissa and Abundant Growth.
All of Magic's most powerful artifacts, enchantments and nonbasics are legal in Highlander and therefore ~ is better in this format than it is in others.
Especially good in combo decks for bouncing a hate piece like Grafdigger's Cage end of turn, untapping and then comboing off.
~ is a big boost to land decks in particular, which already run Sylvan Scrying, Wrenn and Six and Life from Loam.
This whole series of legendary lands increases the density of active cards in your deck they're lands rather than spells. There are already plenty of colour producing lands that do something like become a creature until end of turn, but most of those enter tapped, which is too high a price in a format as fast as Highlander.
Beware against heavy blue decks because they might go find Mystic Sanctuary, which has a basic land type.
The search is a "may", so you can't force them to shuffle away the top of the library.
You need to be very aware of this card when choosing attacks. Perhaps it's best to not attack with your Lurrus for example.
~ is technically not white so it is a way for mono white to kill something like Blood Baron of Vizkopa in case any psycho's have something like that in their sideboard.
Blue source that untaps under a choke. And if it's in hand then you could even bounce the Choke and counter on the way back down.
~ can target your own things, so you can save your guy from removal or you can recast a creature with a strong ETB trigger.
Better in aggro decks or decks which sacrifice creatures for value, or run equipment. But really this can go in any deck that doesn't need the dual land or basic.
The tokens are colourless so the mono red deck might be able to surprise block a Kor Firewalker or Auriok Champion.
Amazing in all formats but especially good in Highlander because there can only be one: If you're running Painter's Grinstone combo and your Painter's Servant gets thoughtseized, you can't draw another one, you'll need to dig it out of your graveyard.
Milling three cards is also huge in Highlander because all the powerful delve and escape cards are legal.
Ok is the sideboard of aggro Lurrus decks to shoot down little creatures and would be fine against Time Vault combo, gives them limited turns to find an answer.
Good antiaggro creature for Mishra's Workshop decks.
Second copy of Cry of the Carnarium. Good options if there are black aggro decks in your metagame. There are so many little black aggro creatures that return from the graveyard these days.
This is a weird card. I like it against control decks in decks with lots of manlands, so you practically always trigger it.
Enchantress decks tend to crush aggro already, but perhaps there's a build out there that is aimed at beating combo and control. In that case this little guy could act as nice cheap removal postboard.
I think you can run this in the sideboard of fatty boom boom decks like Hypergenesis, Sneak Attack and Reanimator against decks that struggle to block ~, e.g. against mono red or combo.
SIDEBOARD
Against decks that deploy multiple 1drops, the graveyard exile and creature are gravy. Of course you wouldn't run this if your own deck runs lots of 1drops.
Boom, that does it for this set review. Been a while since I've done one. Think I'm 7 sets behind at this moment. As usual here are my picks for best cards:
Lion Sash
Boseiju, Who Endures
Oboro, Soaring City
Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
Patchwork Automaton
Tameshi, Reality Architect
The Reality Chip
See you on the glorious field of battle,
Mulch
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