This is my Khaliladesh Australian highlander set review. I Kanaan't wait to put these cards into my decks!
I often talk about cards in the context of the points list, which you can find here. (As of this article, the latest change was Sept 27th Mishra's Workshop +1).
As always, cards which let you recast instants are really good in highlander because: Ancestral Recall, Dig Through Time, Mystic Confluence, Mana Drain, shall I go on? No.
This card also has game. What do you think of this construct?:
UB FREE SHIT
PAY OFF
Metallurgic Summons
PROTECTION
YA DIG
ACCELERATION
LANDS
SIDEBOARD
Back to my 'Phyrexians coming to Kaladesh' theory. This card. I recommend reading all the short stories regarding Kaladesh. Paradoxical Outcome refers to the story of Rashmi, an inventor who created a device which can only teleport INORGANIC matter through SPACE. Sounds like a Phyrexian teleporter to me! Obviously Tezzeret wants a piece of this action.
Grandma Artifacts
I like her in Tinker and Time Vault decks. She comes down a turn or two too late t t t t T_T but I still think she's good.
Gonti, LoL
Now this guy is gangsta. The black market master himself. It's not clear from reading his text but you can still cast the card even if Gonti leaves the battlefield.
Some blink value to be had. Grind em' out with Karakas perhaps.
Against combo you may exile a combo piece or mess with their scry/Top stacked library.
Probably just a sideboard card. Would be good in a BR artifact deck with Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, Goblin Welder and Mishra's Workshop.
If you can manage to build a black aggro artifact deck, then this guy has a home. I like to think of him this way, he turns all your artifacts into removal spells. The cheaper the artifact, the cheaper the removal spell. Sure they didn't take damage that turn so it's not the same but he gets that +1/+1 counter which can make up the damage over the course of the game. Ironically the artifacts you're playing in highlander are probably some of your best cards, so it may be bad to sacrifice them. At least moxes make great fodder later on when you have enough mana.
Whatever value your artifacts gave you before trading with your opponent's card is gravy. His ability may also mess with your opponent's removal spells.
Yeah. I actually think this card is great in aggro. I played Boggart Ram-Gang in my mono-red aggro deck and this card is similar enough that I'm confident it's good.
Great card for dredge. Give your Mum a hug for me.
Obviously a great card. Definitely not Jace, the Mind Sculptor level but playable in any red deck except combo, particularly the ones which wouldn't want to risk exiling a combo piece which they couldn't cast that turn. Rings of Brighthearth combo would be the exception, heh.
All the blue red moon control decks don't currently play any double red spells in the main. I can see Chandra tempting them to the red side. Although, her first +1 ability is less value with counterspells so she may require a more proactive build with more creatures.
All her abilities are useful. Lots of flexibility. Burn baby, burn.
I love cards like this, huge build restriction with decent payoff. Building decks is what I get the most enjoyment from.
So obviously you have your deck's top-end be a bunch powerful artifacts. That's also what you want to do in Tinker but you can't play them together unless you get sneaky with how you produce artifacts.
That's two powerful cards to build around. We need some redundancy; Daretti, Scrap Savant and Shape Anew can help, here we go:
JESKAI ARTIFICERS
Mental Misstep
Mother of Runes
Skullclamp**
Brainstorm
Stoneforge Mystic*
Mana Drain*
Blade Splicer
Tinker***
Nahiri, the Harbinger
Batterskull
Wurmcoil Engine
Myr Battlesphere
Blightsteel Colossus
Mishra's Factory
Blinkmoth Nexus
Inkmoth Nexus
Ancient Tomb
Volcanic Island
Steam Vents
Plateau
Sacred Foundry
Tundra
Hallowed Fountain
Flooded Strand
Scalding Tarn
Misty Rainforest
Polluted Delta
Wooded Foothills
Arid Mesa
Bloodstained Mire
Marsh Flats
Windswept heath
Island
Island
Plains
Plains
SIDEBOARD
Show and Tell
Sundering Titan
Vedalken Shackles
Mindbreak Trap
Faerie Macabre
Surgical Extraction
Extract
(Yes I've lost my patience with the hyperlinking. Just going to link the more obscure cards)
Conveniently the above list features many other cards from this set. Playing Tinker in a deck with no cheap 'artifacts' is not easy.
The curve on this deck is pretty bad, but it plays cool cards and that's what counts right?
It's hard to fit enough artifacts into the deck to make Madcap Experiment worth it. I managed fourteen. That's about four damage taken on average from Madcap Experiment. Using Phyrexian mana as a bench mark, the artifacts in the deck are worth the damage.
A little more on the other cards featured in this list:
Similar to Baneslayer Angel. At her best when paired with cards like: DITS (Duress, Inquisition, Thoughtseize), Mental Misstep, Mother of Runes, Tidehollow Sculler, Thought-Knot Seer.
I had the privilege of crewing this at the prerelease and it was disgustingly good. I didn't lost a game that I cast it. It's the best vehicle defensively.
Sa-hee-hee-heeeeeliiii.
Decent in an aggro deck with lots of 'enters triggers'. I've heard buzzings of a combo in modern with Liquimetal Coating, but you'd need a third piece to complete the combo, for example Disciple of the Vault.
I played Pia in an update of my Thran Turbine + Braid of Fire decklist from my last set review and she was impressive. You always get some value from her and she's still good late game as a mana-sink.
Inkmoth Nexus
Glistener Elf
Plague Stinger
Plague Myr
Necropede
Ichorclaw Myr
Lost Leonin
Blighted Agent
Whispering Specter
Viridian Corrupter
Rot Wolf
Razor Swine
Priests of Norn
Phyrexian Crusader
Cystbearer
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
I haven't actually built a double strike deck but here's the list of creatures I presume are playable:
Boros Swiftblade
Fencing Ace
Viashino Slaughtermaster
Warren Instigator
Fabled Hero
Aven Sunstriker
Mirran Crusader
Prophetic Flamespeaker
Skyhunter Skirmisher
Hearthfire Hobgoblin
Iroas's Champion
Silverblade Paladin
Arashin Foremost
It's an interesting comparison: Infect needs to be more colours to play all the creatures but you might just want to be five colours anyway to gain access to Might of Alara and Gaea's Might.
The infect creatures seem to have extra abilities but the double strike creatures are boosted by the pain of your opponent's mana base.
Tough call. I'll let you decide which is more worthy of Blossoming Defenses.
Red artifact aggro, nothing else. I've heard her called Nerd Ape, which is a better name.
Bomat Courier goes in the madess deck from my Eldritch Moon set review. By the way, I missed a few cards in that list: Liliana of the Veil and Oona's Prowler. There's been another great addition to that deck from Kaladesh. We're going to be seeing a lot of it for the next year or so:
CHOPPER
Learn how to drive vehicles with Chopper:
Learn how to drive vehicles with Chopper:
annnnd this one's for all you globetrotting pros out there (Minesy/Jason Chung/Manderson):
A great addition to all the aggro decks. I also think it will out-perform in Recurring Nightmare strategies.
Since I've started working an office job, I've been enjoying a few MTG podcasts. Most recently I listened to Top Level Podcast. Pat Chapin put it convincingly, "It's a flying Watchwolf that turns your creatures into hasty Merfolk Looters". I've also been listening to Limited Resources, LSV and Marshall Sutcliffe pair well together. The occasional episode of This Machine Kills Netdeckers was entertaining since I'm a player from Melbourne. None of those podcasts talk highlander unfortunately. Perhaps highlander will get big enough for that one day.
CHOO CHOO!!!
Biggie train, smallie cost. Not as good as Smuggler's Copter. You lose a blocker whenever you crew a vehicle so I only like them in aggro decks. I like vehicles for the threat diversity that they add. Sulfuric Vortex is a far better card because it doesn't die to creature removal. Vehicles are obviously easier to deal with than enchantments but you see my point.
'Vehicles plus haste creatures' is a lower average power than 'Vehicles plus non-haste creatures'. For example, you want play vehicles and you have a choice between Brazen Scourge and Mindsparker, go with the Mindsparker.
VROOM VROOM
Better than Renegade Freighter but I do like trains much more than cars, especially luxury cars.
This is great at running over planeswalkers.
I'm playing Bombat Babar Boat Barge Brigade in the sideboard of my Mishra's Workshop deck against control matchups, so I guess I consider it playable.
No idea what sound this thing makes. Not sure what's up with the giant snout coming out of it either. Looks more like one of those tree branch shredding trailers.
Also in my Workshop sideboard, although I think it has wider applications.
I like this card in greedy midrange decks with Garruks and one-cost removal.
Sometimes he won't reduce the creature's power to zero but he can shut down mana creatures, which are popular in highlander.
Kambal is very good. I would play him in any midrange or aggro deck. He's even fine as storm hate in the board.
Untapping a land could also be quite good in Tolarian Academy and Gaea's Cradle decks. Granted that may make those lands vulnerable to creature removal; but if they go to the graveyard, Nissa can return them and I doubt your opponent will have removal up anyway, since they would be looking to reduce the mana output of Academy/Cradle by killing your creatures before you untap. If you think they have removal, you can always -3 to get something back instead.
Nissa has strong synergy and is still good by herself. Powerful card.
Highlander's mana is already good enough but these fill some niche roles:
- The blue producing ones help protect against Choke, Boil and Carpet of Flowers.
- They all help in decks which are trying to break the synergy of cards like Leonin Arbiter, Suppression Field and Root Maze.
- They go in decks which play extremely colour intensive cards like Necropotence, where regular dual lands aren't enough.
- These lands save fast combo decks some life. Especially relevant for Channel and Ad Nauseum.
Well Zoo's happy. They did it. The power creeper has climbed all the way to the top of the World Tree and the only thing left is the Ninth Season of Dragon Ball Z, then strangulation.
With the addition of Voltaic Brawler, Zoo may need to reconsider which mox or moxes they play. Moxes have been very strong since coming down to two points, by the way. I like how they give previously unsupported decks somewhere to dump their points but I don't like the walkover games which moxes can cause.
Oh mumma. She/it is huuuge. I've played with her already and can confirm, playable. The immediate four counter distribution gives her the required speed against combo, the required value against control and the required size against aggro.
I expect her to be hulking alongside Titania, Protector of Argoth in all the Birthing Pod decks. Kitchen Finks into Murderous Redcap into Verdurous Gearhulk to remove their -1/-1 counters. So much value.
Can't be Go for the Throat'd.
Can be Green Sun's Zenith'd.
Here's one last decklist so I feature Toolcraft Exemplar:
Thraben Inspector
Memnite
Mishra's Bauble
Vedalken Certarch
Vault Skirge
Signal Pest
Skullclamp**
Smuggler's Copter
Scrapheap Scrounger
Spell Skite
Hangarback Walker
Stoneforge Mystic*
Arcbound Ravager
Steel Overseer
Baleful Strix
Porcelain Legionnaire
Phyrexian Revoker
Cranial Plating
Trinket Mage
Master of Etherium
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Mox Diamond
Mox Sapphire
Mox Jet
Mox Opal
Glimmervoid
Blinkmoth Nexus
Mishra's Factory
Tundra
Underground Sea
Scrubland
Hallowed Fountain
Watery Grave
Godless Shrine
Flooded Strand
Marsh Flats
Polluted Delta
Scalding Tarn
Arid Mesa
Bloodstained Mire
Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
SIDEBOARD
Tormod's Crypt
Path to Exile
Grafdigger's Cage
Etched Champion
Bitterblossom
SPECIAL MENTIONS:
Combos with Isochron Scepter or Izzet Guildmage plus non-land mana producers. Sounds like a terrible combo but fun.
Hardened Scales anyone? This brings me back to my 'Tezzeret brings Phyrexia to Kaladesh' theory. This card adds counters on players, you know what counters go on players other than energy counters? Poison counters.
That concludes my Kaladesh highlander set review. I hope you feel high and inspired. I'm looking forward to the next big tournament. Not sure when that'll be but hopefully soon. Cheers,
Luke
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