Modern Horizons will probably be the most influential set for Highlander since enemy fetchlands in original Zendikar. There are so many pushed cards. This set review will take me weeks. I did a partial set review for AUSeternal.com for the black and green cards. I'll just copypaste it here to save time; then move some cards around for better context.
Ok, here we go!
It's all about what you're sacrificing; Bloodghast is free (tutorable with Entomb). Bitterblossom and Dreadhorde Invasion also provide therapist fodder. Some creatures really want to die, e.g. Academy Rector/Arena Rector.
DITS, Gitaxian Probe and Vendilion Clique increase the effectiveness of your first therapy session.
I've played Cabal Therapy blind many times in Highlander and damn does it feel good hitting blind. One of the highest skill tests in Highlander.
It's worth noting that you choose targets before paying costs, so if your opponent has no creatures, you can still target the creatures you sacrifice.
This card is just so fitting. The whole package of flavour, colour scheme and power come together really nicely. A card fitting of the name Yawgmoth.
For tribal strategies only. There's not enough good vampire payoffs yet but this is progress. The only other Vampire payoffs I'm excited about are Vampire Nocturnus and maybe Legion Lieutenant.
Triggers off your opponent's creature's too, which is powerful. If only you could turn Walking Ballista into a vampire...
Triggers off your opponent's creature's too, which is powerful. If only you could turn Walking Ballista into a vampire...
There isn't a persist vampire yet but it makes flavour sense, so it's possible.
Great flavour.
I hope all you mono black players didn't invest in beta swamps! With the printing of Modern Horizons there's a good chance that 'basic basics' are obsoleted by snow-covered basics. Even if you aren't running things that care about snow, now there are some powerful cards to bluff.
Back to the actual card - sweepers aren't maindeckable in all metagames. They are certainly sideboardable though.
There are plenty other negneg sweepers to choose from. Which ones depends on metagame and your deck's weaknesses. You may need to kill big threats with Toxic Deluge or exile resilient threats with Cry of the Carnarium.
'Swamp Skred'
It's not Fatal Push but in mono-swamps it's fine.
Unlikely, but there's a glimpse of potential: Basal Sliver and Dormant Sliver to draw a card for each Sliver in your graveyard. Add Psionic Sliver in there and you can shock something each time, or Lavabelly Sliver for a ping...This is getting a little too mana intensive.
If you can cast it, then yeah, get on in! You don't even need other slivers in your deck. As long as all your spells are proactive and don't have 'X' in their cost, then you're good.
Congregation at Dawn got better. Set up The First Sliver into Bloodbraid Elf into Shardless Agent into your best two-drop. That should win the game. The mana is tricky of course and you may have drawn one of those cascade creatures already, making it less effective. Pretty nice if you have a Hero of Precinct One beforehand. All that ties in well with Niv-Mizzet Reborn. Deck sounds really fun.
Yeah there's probably a Slivers deck now. Cloudshredder Sliver being one of the better ones.
Congregation at Dawn got better. Set up The First Sliver into Bloodbraid Elf into Shardless Agent into your best two-drop. That should win the game. The mana is tricky of course and you may have drawn one of those cascade creatures already, making it less effective. Pretty nice if you have a Hero of Precinct One beforehand. All that ties in well with Niv-Mizzet Reborn. Deck sounds really fun.
I'm gonna use this mechanic one day!
Other 'spiters' include:
Spiteful Sliver
Boros Reckoner
The idea is to deal them a tonne of damage. Volcano Hellion and Fire Covenant are easy to set up. Blasphemous Act in the board against swarm. Other ways involve a large graveyard, typically full of instants and sorceries:
Rush of Vitality is cool - infinite life if you can get a damage trigger.
Can just be chump blocked easily; but if your deck can discard at will, this is decent value. Good with dredgers.
How much does your opponent have to pay to cast Mind Rot for you to be ahead? Because this card kind of turns your opponent's creatures into Mind Rots on your terms. If your opponent deployed multiple creatures then it's amazingly efficient.
There are some powerful draw engines which are desperate to regain tempo, Force of Despair helps.
Late game this is fine to hard cast.
Force of Will is easier to obtain blue spell density for, due to cantrips, which black doesn't have.
This doesn't target, so it's a good answer to True-Name Nemesis and Protean Hulk piles using Sylvan Safekeeper.
Easily searched for by tutors and a great answer to True-Name Nemesis. Much better than the existing creatures based answers like Orzhov Pontiff and Plague Mare.
Devastating against elves.
Bad news for tribal decks, which were already struggling, but I don't imagine this will see a huge amount of play.
Zombies almost have enough payoff now. Zombie Trailblazer, Cryptbreaker, Undead Warchief and Gravecrawler are some of the better ones.
Goes nicely with the next little guy:
Persist creatures are always exciting for combo.
Cards which repeatedly remove the -1/-1 counter include:
Then all you need is a sacrifice outlet that provides some value and voila, combo. Notable sac outlets include:
Viscera Seer
annnnd
Weirdly he can sling himself. I suppose he could sever a rope of something.
Very gummy: Great vs spot removal. Can hold back Tarmogoyf, Gurmag Angler, etc for a while.
Can pull tricks like blinking for value or sacrificing blockers to prevent Jitte triggers.
Can be tutored for by Goblin Matron, which is good news for Food Chain + Squee, the Immortal. Can also substitute Food Chain for Aluren.
Super niche, but when you resolve Goblin Recruiter, you rely on Goblin Ringleader to really pull ahead on card advantage. Sometimes Ringleader gets countered, as does Boggart Birth Rite. Graveshifter can be the back up back up (tell me whatcha wanna do now?)
Persist combo.
Collected company hit.
Collected company hit.
It may not currently work, but I can imagine a deck which is just cheap changelings and all the insane tribal payoffs. Like the following:
Would've been funnier if Ayula was male.
Bears aren't a thing but they could be one day! Cummon Words of Wilding!
A lot more castable in Life from the Loam strategies than Seismic Assault and a lot more efficient than Zombie Infestation.
Amazing with Land Tax.
The GGG casting cost is manageable if you run allied green 'battle lands' and 'cycling duals' as third and fourth green sources for your off-colour fetchlands, e.g. Canopy Vista and Scattered Groves respectively.
Instant-speed activation is great for winning combat and playing around removal.
Lots of green devotion for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, which is strong in green due to mana dorks and land tutors.
Nice answer to Umezawa's Jitte, Vedalken Shackles, Black Lotus and Time Vault. Especially for decks with creature tutors like Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Eladamri's Call and Worldly Tutor. All those tutors now answer artifacts a turn earlier since Ouphe is two mana rather than the three that Pridemage costs.
A tension with this card is that decks which want it are probably using equipment to augment their creatures. I wouldn't maindeck this in a deck with equipment, but I'd consider it for the sideboard where it can be enough to win despite nombos. Besides, Skullclamp often gets boarded out against combo.
When sideboarding, you prefer to bring in cards which differ from your maindeck. This is because your opponent will bring in hate for your existing card types. This reasoning makes Collector Ouphe arguably weaker than Stony Silence and Null Rod despite attacking for 2 damage each turn. However, it can be tutored for easily. But it comes with a free froghurt!
When sideboarding, you prefer to bring in cards which differ from your maindeck. This is because your opponent will bring in hate for your existing card types. This reasoning makes Collector Ouphe arguably weaker than Stony Silence and Null Rod despite attacking for 2 damage each turn. However, it can be tutored for easily. But it comes with a free froghurt!
Creature decks aside, you might just be a Sultai control deck and use this postboard when creature removal is scarce.
"up to" are important words here.
If you tapout, your opponent will thinks it's safe to cast and equip their equipment or go for their Time Vault kill. Force of Vigor is a blowout in these cases. Not having to hold up mana is huge.
Like the other 'forces' in this cycle, hard casting it is still fine.
Whether this is maindeckable is a metagame call.
Two 4/4 tramplers are better than drawing three cards and therefore this is better than Ancestral Vision albeit in a weaker colour.
Unlike creatures with suspend, the tokens won't have haste because this is a sorcery, not a creature spell.
Times really nicely with Wraths if you suspend turn one. This card is mostly for green control decks. Sultai has been popular in the past.
Yet another strong no-cost sorcery to 'cheat cast' with cards like Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Finale of Promise.
In competition with Thragtusk, Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves and Regisaur Alpha to be Titania's understudy.
Leaves plenty of value behind if you continue up the Pod chain. Fantastic to blink.
Low toughness can be an advantage: Reveillark, Vesperlark, Grenzo, Dungeon Warden, Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the Guard.
Almost certainly the biggest Elf.
Five bodies makes any kind of anthem amazing.
Even though this is a five-drop, with acceleration it's still fast against combo, swinging for 9 is no joke.
Strong pump spell for infect and double strike strategies.
Unique and powerful (Rosheen Meanderer doesn't count).
Being an 'all X' deck probably doesn't have the critical mass of payoffs required yet, but it could happen. Those cards are certainly powerful with Channel and other big mana producers.
Enchantments are the hardest card type (apart from planeswalkers) to tutor for, so building around one enchantment can be tricky; Enlightened Tutor and it drops off from there.
Playable in the land deck; could draw two or three lands and possibly bin a Life from the Loam. Decent in creature heavy graveyard strategies, e.g. delirium (with artifact creatures and enchantment creatures), delve and threshold.
4/4 Vigilance flying is a must-kill. All-round solid card. The four-drop slot of any highlander deck is heavily contested though.
Most powerful with flying tokens: Spectral Procession, Lingering Souls, Bitterblossom.
Get your goggles ready!
Good with Karakas, although an artifact deck is unlikely to have points spare for that.
Goes infinite with Thopter Sword combo but you're probably winning anyway.
Tolarian Academy is a natural companion. He kind of IS a Tolarian Academy.
Gets insane with Paradox Engine.
Amazing with Winter Orb, Static Orb, Genesis Chamber, Howling Mine and Trinisphere.
Mill your deck with Pili-Pala and Mesmeric Orb then kill with Dread Return.
Is a kill with infinite mana.
Blew my mind when I was made aware you draw the cards even if you don't discard. This card is way better than I thought.
Obviously gas in the 'fill your graveyard with instants and sorceries' a.k.a. 'Drakes' deck.
Great with anthems.
Great in reanimator, especially Recurring Nightmare variants.
Great in dredge.
The activated ability is instant speed, which I didn't expect.
Any new tutor demands close attention.
Sweet things he recruits:
Death's Shadow
Walking Ballista
Deathrite Shaman
Mistcaller (Flash hate)
Cabal Therapist
Dryad Arbor if you haven't got a land drop.
And many more sweet things I'm sure.
Buys you a turn against Storm and is good IN combo decks for protecting your big turn.
Strong with Possibility Storm. Your deck has no creatures except Emrakul, a single zero-cmc creature and creatures which tutor for the zero-cmc. Since Possibility Storm shuffles the replaced spell back in, if you hit Ranger-Captain of Eos, you tutor for the zero-cmc and recast it and repeat until you CAST Emrakul.
6 mana is too much to make this better for you than your opponent. Tolarian Academy combo decks can generate that kind of mana, but at that point you may as well kill them rather than use this to find the card that kills them. I had to look it up and no, Echo of Eons doesn't shuffle itself into your library when you hardcast it.
This is actually all about the flashback cost. Therefore you need to run lots of ways to discard it, of which there are more than I can list. You still need your cards to be much cheaper than your opponents, so cheap that on average they cost negative mana, i.e. generate you mana. Your deck also needs a way to win the game in the 7 card hand you draw, or at least another way to keep drawing cards.
If you can do all that, Echo of Eons is '3 mana win the game'.
Strong with Lion's Eye Diamond.
If you're storming off with just instants and sorceries then this kills on (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8=36) the 8th instant or sorcery. But realistically the 7th because they probably fetched a couple times or something. 7 is less than 10 for Tendrils of Agony, but of course it's instants and sorceries only.
You can reduce the kill requirement by preventing them from gaining that 10 life: You could play this then in response to the life trigger cast Atarka's Command, Skullcrack or if you're really keen, Flames of the Blood Hand.
Other ways of preventing that life include Rampaging Ferocidon (still banned in standard) and Tibalt, Rakish Instigator.
The cards I'm really excited by though are Tainted Remedy, Kavu Predator and False Cure. Have. A. Nice. Life.
There are other times you want to give your opponent life, Punishing Fire comes to mind.
Well well. I sit today. In this chair. And I realise that I have changed my mind overtime with the metagame; Back in the day Savannah Lions was slightly better than Isamaru because you could draw cards at will with Skullclamp. For a similar reason I didn't want to play any anthems in my creature decks unless they were really powerful. The card that begun to reverse this for me was Liliana, the Last Hope. You could justify the occasional loss when they drew her but add Fire//Ice and Electrolyze from Grixis and now X/1's are a liability. And now there is also Wrenn and Six, which I'll get to next.
My next build of mono-white (you need lots of white to alt-cast Force of Virtue) will be more focused on anthems rather than Skullclamp.
Someone will eventually alter Stimpy onto Six's head.
Well, well, well. That is gross. Imagine turn two on the play you answer your opponent's two drop and then turn three you have Wrenn and Six and a Strip Mine. Very unlikely that your opponent will have an answer. Deathrite Shaman is their best hope. Even against a Kird Ape you'll still get three activations. Gross.
Crop Rotation is a great Strip Mine tutor here. Wasteland functions as Strip Mine against many decks.
If you play a mana dork turn one you can even begin Strip Mining on turn 2 T_T. What fun.
Even just getting a fetchland back each turn is pretty amazing.
...AND -2 shoot something for a damage!? Cummon. The opponent plays their turn one mana dork, you shoot it and probably just win the game unless they follow up with a two-drop haste creature.
Like I mentioned above, X/1's just got a little bit worse. I don't want to be relying on them now whilst Wrenn and Six hype is peaking. I would also play a higher land count than usual due to extra Strip Mines and Wastelands.
If you add a cycling land or one of the new 'horizon' lands to your deck, you have the chance for Wrenn and Six to draw you two cards a turn in the late game.
Combo decks which rely on powerful lands like Gaea's Cradle, Tolarian Academy and Dark Depths can play this as backup, red mana permitting.
Blue is the undisputed best colour in highlander and Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast are the best cards against blue, so the temptation to be UR is great. And since you're red, you have the luxury of playing a third colour without losing to Blood Moon. The question is then white, black or green. Each have merit but Wrenn and Six is a new pull to green. Expect a lot of RUG in the immediate future.
A bit cute but not a bad choice. Especially good with Baleful Strix and Ice-Fang Coatl (and Thalakos Seer, but that card needs a lot of work).
There's a good chance your opponent has killed all your creatures or has blockers for all your creatures, therefore it's likely you will hard cast this, and that means Liliana, the Last Hope / Wrenn and Six vulnerability.
Ninja's all require the same support: evasion creatures, ideally with ETB triggers.
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is very powerful and worth building around. Ingenious Infiltrator is a shadow of the Tiger's Shadow, but still strong.
The possibility of a ninja can be indicated to the removal spell player by the category of creatures being played. As the ninja player, you should be wary of opposing removal; if you swap in your ninja and it dies before connecting, that is a tempo loss.
Baleful Strix has proven itself as one of the best cards in the format.
All blue green decks should run snow-covered basics to bluff this.
"three other snow permanents" requires some deliberate fetching but is easy to do.
That card draw raises the strength of any blink effects you may want to run.
One of the few playable snakes, so don't go playing it with Ophiomancer.
I've been working on Aluren decks lately; cheap blue or black creatures with good ETB's are valuable for Cavern Harpy.
Need a couple more snow sets before this is worthwhile, but it is powerful.
In a creature-heavy metagame control decks with lots of sweepers can play this.
There are cards I've wanted to play but the pieces aren't there yet. Hatching Plans and Demonic Pact are two of those cards; Generous Gift and Beast Within are good at destroying them.
Decent ≤1 power creatures to bring back:
Trostani's Summoner
Triskelion
Deep Forest Hermit
Deranged Hermit
Geist-Honored Monk
Hermit Druid
Things start to get unfair with Body Double; that enables infinite sacrifice. Altar of Dimentia or Goblin Bombardment become deadly.
If Vesperlark remains in play, you can use Phantasmal Image or any clone for infinite sacrifice. Felidar Guardian also works.
Vesperlark is tutorable by Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the Guard, which are also nice to blink. There's something going on there.
Combo potential with Hermit Druid. Sacrifice him to Cabal Therapy and that's a kill. You may need a couple extra lands in your deck to account for the ones you draw pre-combo.
He's cheap enough that you don't need Dread Return to resolve. Instead you could Memory's Journey or Krosan Reclamation him ontop and hardcast him.
Often you want to flashback Cabal Therapy earlier to rid some disruption from your opponent. You don't have this option if you need Therapy for sacrificing Ruination Rioter. Perhaps Smiting Helix is a good back up:
Just another spell with cascade, which is totally fine for the all-in Hypergenesis/Living End/Restore Balance decks, which are only cascading into other cascade spells or their namesake card.
This is fine for burn decks too, where it turns every land after the fourth into burn.
Time Vault / Voltaic Servant
Umezawa's Jitte
Painter's Servant
Sorcerous Spyglass
Baleful Strix
Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek
and many more.
Also a wizard that you can bounce with Riptide Laboratory. Tribute Mage should really be an artificer, but whatever. Wizards are too liberal with the Wizard creature type I reckon.
Hideaway means it enters tapped.
Annoys me that the eye isn't centred in the art and his staff is cropped, my eyes.
Also nifty with Riptide Laboratory.
Also nifty to blink or return with Cavern Harpy in the Food Chain / Aluren deck, which also includes Squee, the Immortal, Eternal Scourge and Misthollow Griffin, which can be cast from exile when they're hidden away!
Hideaway lets you choose the order on the bottom, so there's possible abuse. Grenzo, Dungeon Warden comes to mind.
Yeah, just. Put equipment or auras on it. Suntail Hawk eat your heart out.
You can get blown out by removal but this goes infinite with Eternal Witness and Time Walk. There's also Archaeomancer and the five cost ones; more expensive but only two colours.
No combos yet, but all it would take is something like a snow clone and this would go infinite with Felidar Guardian.
Fine sideboard card for elemental tribal against creature decks.
Sinkhole is an iconic land destruction spell. This new 'sinkhole' creates confusion.
"or planeswalker" is pretty huge.
There's diminishing returns on delve spells but even though Magmatic Sinkhole is worse than the others, you may not want the others for various reasons, e.g. you may not be that colour or you may not have the spare points for Treasure Cruise / Dig Through Time.
Gives red a great answer to Tarmogoyf, Tasigur and Gurmag Angler. Even better than Dismember. Before this they were relying on clunky stuff like Roast.
Strategic Planning has been played in combo decks here and there. Blue is spoiled for card selection. It's possible there are combo decks out there which are happy to cut blue if given more black card selection.
Fine in aggro decks. Kills itself if you want that option with Skullclamp.
Not the most backbreaking artifact hate but casting this every turn against a Mishra's Workshop deck will still win the game. Shenanigans gets a lot better if your deck mills itself, because you're more likely to find it.
The power level is there. I don't think you can be a reactive control deck without counterspells because planeswalkers and ETB creatures will get too much value against you. I think you need to be a land destruction deck with Time Walk or a storm deck which maximises the strength of Wheel of Fortune, Time Twister and Doomsday.
Hogaak would be a sick metal band name. All the cards from the modern deck would be the song names. It'd be great. Bridge from Below just got banned in modern due to its strength with Hogaak and Altar of Dementia, doesn't mean you can't do it in Highlander though! Obviously you can't go as hard because we only have one Bridge from Below, where two fully pays Hogaak's colour requirement.
Highlander has a quarter of the good black and green 'return from graveyard' creatures, so we'll be mostly relying on hardcast creatures. That's fine though.
Recurring Nightmare decks seem appropriate - lots of cheap dudes and selfmill.
I've seen a lot of people make the mistake of thinking Hogaak is like Haakon regarding casting from graveyard. Hogaak can still be cast from hand. Just think of it as a bigger Gurmag Angler that needs cheap creatures around.
Be wary of Mana Drain when casting it.
Easier to cast than Ball Lighting and much better.
Strong with:
Thunderkin Awakener from Core20
Skullclamp
Ooze Garden
Recurring Nightmare (that card's really on my mind)
Assault Strobe
Boros Charm
Psychotic Fury
Soulflayer
Buys time against Umezawa's Jitte.
Hate bear against some decks, e.g. Tendrils of Agony.
Obviously fits nicely into any tribal deck that can cast it.
Interesting that the trigger allows them to activate. It doesn't say "costs an extra 1". If they don't read the card and activate without paying the extra mana, they get wrecked. I saw a Field of Ruin activation get countered on camera at magicfest Dallas-Fortworth. Brutal.
Gets better if you don't mind sacrificing your creatures. A swarmy spirit deck would be the best I think. Bloodghast, Entomb, Lingering Souls, Spectral Procession, etc.
Green has better options, e.g. Nature's Claim, Qasali Pridemage. However, if you're playing white but not green, then this is Disenchant number two.
It may look strictly better than Disenchant but there are cards like Sphinx of the Steel Wind.
Not as powerful as it looks, but it's playable in the right decks. I like it in fair Balance decks that are just trying to get value. I like it in fair Wheel of Fortune decks that are just trying to dump their hand much faster than their opponent.
You don't want this in decks that are trying to win quickly. You want this in decks that are aiming for a longer game where both players are drawing lots of cards, where this has time to resolve and provide mana advantage.
Boundless Moron
Possible inclusion in the Shadowborn Apostle deck. He's a demon and he makes all your apostles cost 0. However, after sacrificing six of them, you may not have any left to cast for free and beat down with. Huge card-draw like Desperate Research will fix that.
Most of the good artifact creatures are constructs; add the tribal payoffs and you have a strong midrange deck. There are definitely issues with this strategy though: lack of disruption and the possibility of artifact hate. I would only bust out construct tribal in a metagame where no one is expecting a Workshop deck.
Sacrifice artifacts is very useful for Mana Crypt, Hangarback Walker, Su-Chi and artifacts targeted by Dack Fayden.
Some other construct tribal payoffs:
Door of Destinies
Obelisk of Urd
Urza's Incubator
Metallic Mimic
Vanquisher's Banner
Adaptive Automaton
Herald's Horn
Cavern of Souls
Isamaru for mono colour aggro decks which don't need dual lands.
Possible Trinket Mage target.
Lots of players don't realise the downside of running mana rocks. You need your big spell to make up for the lost spell of the mana rock and also the tempo loss of casting the mana rock the turn before. It's also possible the big spell gets countered or discarded. Yes, mana rocks will regain the turn-two tempo loss over the next few turns and even begin to provide a mana advantage, but only if you have enough gas to spend all your mana on turn three, four and five. Despite all that, talismans have a home. Sometimes you need the colour fixing and an artifact to sacrifice to Tinker/Reshape/Transmute Artifact.
They get a lot better if your deck has lots of one-drops that you can cast the same turn as the Talisman.
Helps two-colour snow decks with colour fixing and also provides sacrifice fodder to Goblin Welder, Tinker, etc.
You don't care about this getting stolen by Dack Fayden or killed by Kolaghan's Command. There aren't many artifacts you can say that about. Eventually there may be enough of them that you can play cards like Tinker, Transmute Artifact and Reshape without being weak to artifact hate.
Note that Arcum's Astrolabe is a snow permanent, therefore the mana it converts will be snow mana.
A fine manland for mono colour decks. Worse than Mishra's Factory and Mutavault but I can imagine some builds that want the third manland.
A low-fee backup for decks that are all-in on certain enchantments.
Nice utility with enchantments that sacrifice, e.g. Seal of Fire, Seal of Cleansing, Seal of Primordium.
I've found Volrath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins to be too slow when repeatedly returning anything cmc≥3.
Another fetchland, pretty huge. That means improvement for all the following cards:
Deathrite Shaman
Tasigur, Gurmag Angler, Dig Through Time, etc
Search for Azcanta
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Brainstorm
Restore
Titania, Protector of Argoth
Sensei's Divining Top
It also makes Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon and Back to Basics worse.
Four basics is my absolute minimum for running Prismatic Vista but I would really want five or six. Field of Ruin, Assassin's Trophy, Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter factor into the basic count also.
The price of Horizon Canopy is set to drop. Wizards can't leave this cycle unfinished. This is very good news for low-curve decks which are happy to sacrifice their lands after dumping their hand. For other decks it may not be worth the life loss.
Phew! Finally finished. Hope you enjoyed it.
My pick for best cards (roughly in power order) are:
Prismatic Vista
Wrenn and Six
Force of Negation
Enemy horizon land cycle
Seasoned Pyromancer
Magmatic Sinkhole
Archmage's Charm
Happy highlandering,
Mulch
Most powerful with flying tokens: Spectral Procession, Lingering Souls, Bitterblossom.
Good with Karakas, although an artifact deck is unlikely to have points spare for that.
Goes infinite with Thopter Sword combo but you're probably winning anyway.
Tolarian Academy is a natural companion. He kind of IS a Tolarian Academy.
Gets insane with Paradox Engine.
Amazing with Winter Orb, Static Orb, Genesis Chamber, Howling Mine and Trinisphere.
Mill your deck with Pili-Pala and Mesmeric Orb then kill with Dread Return.
Is a kill with infinite mana.
Obviously gas in the 'fill your graveyard with instants and sorceries' a.k.a. 'Drakes' deck.
Great with anthems.
Great in reanimator, especially Recurring Nightmare variants.
Great in dredge.
The activated ability is instant speed, which I didn't expect.
Sweet things he recruits:
Death's Shadow
Walking Ballista
Deathrite Shaman
Mistcaller (Flash hate)
Cabal Therapist
Dryad Arbor if you haven't got a land drop.
And many more sweet things I'm sure.
Buys you a turn against Storm and is good IN combo decks for protecting your big turn.
Strong with Possibility Storm. Your deck has no creatures except Emrakul, a single zero-cmc creature and creatures which tutor for the zero-cmc. Since Possibility Storm shuffles the replaced spell back in, if you hit Ranger-Captain of Eos, you tutor for the zero-cmc and recast it and repeat until you CAST Emrakul.
This is actually all about the flashback cost. Therefore you need to run lots of ways to discard it, of which there are more than I can list. You still need your cards to be much cheaper than your opponents, so cheap that on average they cost negative mana, i.e. generate you mana. Your deck also needs a way to win the game in the 7 card hand you draw, or at least another way to keep drawing cards.
If you can do all that, Echo of Eons is '3 mana win the game'.
Strong with Lion's Eye Diamond.
You can reduce the kill requirement by preventing them from gaining that 10 life: You could play this then in response to the life trigger cast Atarka's Command, Skullcrack or if you're really keen, Flames of the Blood Hand.
Other ways of preventing that life include Rampaging Ferocidon (still banned in standard) and Tibalt, Rakish Instigator.
The cards I'm really excited by though are Tainted Remedy, Kavu Predator and False Cure. Have. A. Nice. Life.
There are other times you want to give your opponent life, Punishing Fire comes to mind.
My next build of mono-white (you need lots of white to alt-cast Force of Virtue) will be more focused on anthems rather than Skullclamp.
Well, well, well. That is gross. Imagine turn two on the play you answer your opponent's two drop and then turn three you have Wrenn and Six and a Strip Mine. Very unlikely that your opponent will have an answer. Deathrite Shaman is their best hope. Even against a Kird Ape you'll still get three activations. Gross.
Crop Rotation is a great Strip Mine tutor here. Wasteland functions as Strip Mine against many decks.
If you play a mana dork turn one you can even begin Strip Mining on turn 2 T_T. What fun.
Even just getting a fetchland back each turn is pretty amazing.
...AND -2 shoot something for a damage!? Cummon. The opponent plays their turn one mana dork, you shoot it and probably just win the game unless they follow up with a two-drop haste creature.
Like I mentioned above, X/1's just got a little bit worse. I don't want to be relying on them now whilst Wrenn and Six hype is peaking. I would also play a higher land count than usual due to extra Strip Mines and Wastelands.
If you add a cycling land or one of the new 'horizon' lands to your deck, you have the chance for Wrenn and Six to draw you two cards a turn in the late game.
Combo decks which rely on powerful lands like Gaea's Cradle, Tolarian Academy and Dark Depths can play this as backup, red mana permitting.
Blue is the undisputed best colour in highlander and Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast are the best cards against blue, so the temptation to be UR is great. And since you're red, you have the luxury of playing a third colour without losing to Blood Moon. The question is then white, black or green. Each have merit but Wrenn and Six is a new pull to green. Expect a lot of RUG in the immediate future.
I expect all heavy blue decks to adopt this card. Counters some of the greatest threats to control decks (including planeswalkers like Wrenn and Six). Some decks may dip deeper into blue for greater access to Force of Negation fuel. Naturally they'll pick up Force of Will if they didn't have it already.
This is absolutely fine to hardcast too.
Wow, I only just saw that this exiles. Pretty good against Life from the Loam.
Pretty dumb that Force of Negation looks like it should be good AGAINST Flash but they can still just go off in your turn. Actually, I suppose blue decks can now tapout for a planeswalker with this in hand against Flash. And that planeswalker probably draws cards, which means drawing into counterspells, so the Flash player will certainly try combo off.
This art is way too similar to Force of Negation.
UUU is restrictive. Three colour decks happily play Cryptic Command, so I guess you must ask yourself "Is this fine on turn four?". I'd say yes, presuming your deck has things to do with the single remaining mana.
If we're talking about casting this on turn three, then you're really committed. That commitment means you're only fetching blue lands and fetching blind too incase you draw Archmage's Charm. UUU turn three is a lot easier if you're two colour; and at that point why not run Blood Moon and Back to Basics? That's the most likely home for this card. It even steals mana dorks.
Of course I can't finish this brief without mentioning that this takes Skullclamp.
A lot of people have been poopoo'ing this card but it's still a Ball Lightning; It creates two mini balls. Suck my balls.
Many decks won't be attacking you with creatures, so you need to make use of the burn aspect for this to be always good. It that deck though, you will sometimes have to play defense against other aggro decks, in which case you may live the dream of paying two cards and zero mana to block and trade with two of your opponent's attacking creatures.
Transforms Path of Mettle all by itself, which is pretty cool.
Squee, the Immortal is red and doesn't mind getting exiled.
He's like a really bad Stoneforge Mystic. Maybe he failed at the lithomancer academy and was forced into a life of factory labour.
Time Vault decks already play Buried Ruin and Academy Ruins, so even if your opponent kills him before he can kill himself, it's likely you can get the Time Vault back anyway.
If you want the curve of - turn four Gifts Ungiven - turn five untap, land, win - then you'll want Noxious Revival and Reconstruction. Upgrade Reconstruction to instant, Argivian Find by adding white. Slowing down for good ol' Regrowth and Eternal Witness is also an option. Either way you're adding ways to get back the Time Vault that Goblin Engineer dropped into the engine block.
You may even WANT that artifact in the graveyard if you're talking about Sword of the Meek.
Scrapheap Scrounger in the board is a nice option against control decks.
Mother of Runes is one of my favourite Highlander cards since she makes so many creatures a lot more playable against removal.
Giver of Runes can't give runes to herself, kind of like how it's really hard to tattoo yourself, and I would know!...no I wouldn't...unless they are Diablo II runewords. If I ever survive a fire I'm getting 'Ral Ral' tattoo'd on my head.
While she can't protect herself like Mum, she can protect from colourless. Occasionally you'll verse an artifact creature and be grateful, or a Maze of Ith ('Ith' is another Diablo II rune!).
Giver of Runes provides cover for your creatures whilst they combo off or whilst they pick up swords. And speaking of swords, we have two more!
Kind of funny how Giver of Runes can't protect creatures holding pro-white swords. That doesn't matter if the removal is white though!, or blue in this case.
Blue is in my opinion the best protection colour. The main reason being the ability to get through True-Name Nemesis. Another common reason is protecting a creature from being bounced by Jace, the Mind Sculptor (there are now so many playable Jaces that I feel I have to clarify). Pro blue swords also don't need to worry about Fumble.
Sword of Truth and Justice plays very nicely with planeswalkers that produce tokens, giving you something to equip to and proliferate. Remember to jump your guy with Elspeth, Knight-Errant before equipping.
The most swingy of swords.
This can either be a total blowout or just fine. I imagine the average is still good.
Many planeswalkers and artifacts out there can protect themselves from a connection: Vedalken Shackles, Umezawa's Jitte (if the creature is small enough to neg to death), planeswalker chumpy tokens, etc. I still really like this Sword though. I can imagine playing it over the pro blue swords in decks that already have evasion creatures to get past True-Name Nemesis, especially in midrange heavy metagames where artifacts and planeswalkers are more common.
Not to be confused with Bazaar Trader. I like this with Recurring Nightmare.
Goes straight into my goblin list in the War of the Spark review.
Single red makes makes it smooth with Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors.
Free to cast with Aluren.
One goblin closer to adding Collected Company. Still need a few more.
Another legendary goblin for Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep. Now there's Pashalik, Krenko, Mob Boss and Squee, the Immortal. Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers is tempting but I already have lots of non-red sources.
Pashalik is a win condition for a few unlikely combos:
Aluren + Squee + a sac outlet + Pash.
Food Chain + Squee + a sac outlet + Pash
Kiki-Jiki + Lightning Crafter + Pash (Kiki copies Crafter, the copy champions Kiki, the copy shoots itself, Pash pings for one, Kiki comes back untapped, repeat)
Metallic Mimic + Pash + Murderous Redcap shooting itself over and over.
Unfortunately doesn't go face.
If you're taking down big creatures with this, then you've probably already won, unless those big creatures are Baneslayers.
Somewhat similar to Gempalm Incinerator but instead of a card, you get an extra damage and a 1/1 body, which is probably a better deal.
Nice to put underneath a Lightning Crafter or copy with Kiki-Jiki.
Worth a try.
Chained to the Rocks really wants a basic Mountain anyway due to Field of Ruin and Wasteland. This is like a mono coloured Chained to the Rocks, i.e. better.
Snow in general is a tiny boost for mono coloured decks, since dual lands don't lend to snow synergies.
With my raging hardon for Skullclamp I've gone pretty deep on 'gatherering' things to find with Open the Armory. On Thin Ice is a beautiful addition and I will be rebuilding mono white to test it, once all the Wrenn and Six + Strip Mine hype has simmered. I advocate Tomik, Distinguished Advokist for help against Strip Mine, especially with Aether Vial.
Tutorable with Heliod's Pilgrim.
Gene Holland has been tearing it up for a while now with his very sweet legendary humans aggro deck. The only colour it's currently not playing is blue, but I can imagine him adding a Tundra just for Sisay's activation and some particularly strong humans. He already has Deathrite Shaman and Noble Heirarch as blue sources and he may already be close to running Mana Confluence and City of Brass.
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain is not a particularly strong card but she ticks a lot of boxes for Gene's deck. Here is his (outdated) list from the biggest Highlander event ever from the last Melbourne GP:
5th-8th – Gene Holland – 4c Aggro (We Can Be Heroes)
Champion of the Parish
Isamaru, Hound of Konda
Swords to Plowshares
Thalia’s Lieutenant
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Dark Confidant
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Grim Lavamancer
Lightning Bolt
Avacyn’s Pilgrim
Noble Hierarch
Anafenza, the Foremost
Deathrite Shaman
Grenzo, Dungeon Warden
Kolaghan’s Command
Renegade Rallier
Saskia the Unyielding
Sin Collector
Chrome Mox
Mox Amber
Mox Ruby
Arid Mesa
Badlands
Bayou
Bloodstained Mire
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Forest
Karakas
Mana Confluence
Marsh Flats
Misty Rainforest
Plateau
Savannah
Scrubland
Strip Mine
Taiga
Verdant Catacombs
Volrath’s Stronghold
Wasteland
Windswept Heath
Wooded Foothills
Sideboard
Ancient Grudge
Chained to the Rocks
Choke
Containment Priest
Fire Covenant
Grafdigger’s Cage
Orzhov Pontiff
Pyroblast
Qasali Pridemage
Red Elemental Blast
Not great compared to Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares, but sometimes you just need that 5th removal spell in your deck.
Exiling is very valuable in many situations.
Exiling is very valuable in many situations.
I think this is only suitable in sideboards or creature heavy metas.
You may be able to exhaust your opponent's deck of basics in a long game with Field of Ruin, Path to Exile, Ghost Quarter, etc - to increase the strength of these cards in a long game.
That overload cost is realistic against some decks and will probably win you the game.
Seems good in the eggs deck as another Sai, Master Thopterist and Saheeli, Sublime Artificer.
I suppose Urza, Lord High Artificer gets in there along with Inspiring Statuary and Krark-Clan Ironworks.
If you include something cheap to flicker Mirrodin Besieged with, you can switch it to Phyrexian to win the game, perhaps Teferi's Time Twist or Aminatou, the Fateshifter (or Animatou, the Fatestitcher as I've misspelled it like ten times).
There's a good chance your opponent has killed all your creatures or has blockers for all your creatures, therefore it's likely you will hard cast this, and that means Liliana, the Last Hope / Wrenn and Six vulnerability.
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is very powerful and worth building around. Ingenious Infiltrator is a shadow of the Tiger's Shadow, but still strong.
The possibility of a ninja can be indicated to the removal spell player by the category of creatures being played. As the ninja player, you should be wary of opposing removal; if you swap in your ninja and it dies before connecting, that is a tempo loss.
All blue green decks should run snow-covered basics to bluff this.
"three other snow permanents" requires some deliberate fetching but is easy to do.
That card draw raises the strength of any blink effects you may want to run.
One of the few playable snakes, so don't go playing it with Ophiomancer.
I've been working on Aluren decks lately; cheap blue or black creatures with good ETB's are valuable for Cavern Harpy.
Ohhh it's a snaaaaaake. A slithery slithery snake.
Aggro's greatest weakness is late game. Hexdrinker helps in that regard.
Aggro's greatest weakness is late game. Hexdrinker helps in that regard.
Figure of Destiny and Student of Warfare have always been good cards, it's their mana requirements which have kept them out of the spotlight. Hexdrinker doesn't have that problem.
I've found it's best to play other things before Hexdrinker because it gives your opponent less chance to prepare for level 3 and level 8.
I've found it's best to play other things before Hexdrinker because it gives your opponent less chance to prepare for level 3 and level 8.
This card is weaker in midrange because you won't be fast enough to effectively use the 2/1 aggro body. It is still playable in midrange though, especially builds which can produce a tonne of mana.
There are cards I've wanted to play but the pieces aren't there yet. Hatching Plans and Demonic Pact are two of those cards; Generous Gift and Beast Within are good at destroying them.
Trostani's Summoner
Triskelion
Deep Forest Hermit
Deranged Hermit
Geist-Honored Monk
Hermit Druid
Things start to get unfair with Body Double; that enables infinite sacrifice. Altar of Dimentia or Goblin Bombardment become deadly.
If Vesperlark remains in play, you can use Phantasmal Image or any clone for infinite sacrifice. Felidar Guardian also works.
Vesperlark is tutorable by Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the Guard, which are also nice to blink. There's something going on there.
He's cheap enough that you don't need Dread Return to resolve. Instead you could Memory's Journey or Krosan Reclamation him ontop and hardcast him.
Often you want to flashback Cabal Therapy earlier to rid some disruption from your opponent. You don't have this option if you need Therapy for sacrificing Ruination Rioter. Perhaps Smiting Helix is a good back up:
Value for 'Mardu Pyromancer' style decks with Faithless Looting, Liliana of the Veil and Bedlam Reveler etc.
This is fine for burn decks too, where it turns every land after the fourth into burn.
Umezawa's Jitte
Painter's Servant
Sorcerous Spyglass
Baleful Strix
Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek
and many more.
Also a wizard that you can bounce with Riptide Laboratory. Tribute Mage should really be an artificer, but whatever. Wizards are too liberal with the Wizard creature type I reckon.
Annoys me that the eye isn't centred in the art and his staff is cropped, my eyes.
Also nifty with Riptide Laboratory.
Also nifty to blink or return with Cavern Harpy in the Food Chain / Aluren deck, which also includes Squee, the Immortal, Eternal Scourge and Misthollow Griffin, which can be cast from exile when they're hidden away!
Hideaway lets you choose the order on the bottom, so there's possible abuse. Grenzo, Dungeon Warden comes to mind.
"or planeswalker" is pretty huge.
There's diminishing returns on delve spells but even though Magmatic Sinkhole is worse than the others, you may not want the others for various reasons, e.g. you may not be that colour or you may not have the spare points for Treasure Cruise / Dig Through Time.
Gives red a great answer to Tarmogoyf, Tasigur and Gurmag Angler. Even better than Dismember. Before this they were relying on clunky stuff like Roast.
Highlander has a quarter of the good black and green 'return from graveyard' creatures, so we'll be mostly relying on hardcast creatures. That's fine though.
Recurring Nightmare decks seem appropriate - lots of cheap dudes and selfmill.
I've seen a lot of people make the mistake of thinking Hogaak is like Haakon regarding casting from graveyard. Hogaak can still be cast from hand. Just think of it as a bigger Gurmag Angler that needs cheap creatures around.
Be wary of Mana Drain when casting it.
Strong with:
Thunderkin Awakener from Core20
Skullclamp
Ooze Garden
Recurring Nightmare (that card's really on my mind)
Assault Strobe
Boros Charm
Psychotic Fury
Soulflayer
Hate bear against some decks, e.g. Tendrils of Agony.
Obviously fits nicely into any tribal deck that can cast it.
Interesting that the trigger allows them to activate. It doesn't say "costs an extra 1". If they don't read the card and activate without paying the extra mana, they get wrecked. I saw a Field of Ruin activation get countered on camera at magicfest Dallas-Fortworth. Brutal.
It may look strictly better than Disenchant but there are cards like Sphinx of the Steel Wind.
You don't want this in decks that are trying to win quickly. You want this in decks that are aiming for a longer game where both players are drawing lots of cards, where this has time to resolve and provide mana advantage.
Possible inclusion in the Shadowborn Apostle deck. He's a demon and he makes all your apostles cost 0. However, after sacrificing six of them, you may not have any left to cast for free and beat down with. Huge card-draw like Desperate Research will fix that.
Sacrifice artifacts is very useful for Mana Crypt, Hangarback Walker, Su-Chi and artifacts targeted by Dack Fayden.
Some other construct tribal payoffs:
Door of Destinies
Obelisk of Urd
Urza's Incubator
Metallic Mimic
Vanquisher's Banner
Adaptive Automaton
Herald's Horn
Cavern of Souls
Possible Trinket Mage target.
They get a lot better if your deck has lots of one-drops that you can cast the same turn as the Talisman.
You don't care about this getting stolen by Dack Fayden or killed by Kolaghan's Command. There aren't many artifacts you can say that about. Eventually there may be enough of them that you can play cards like Tinker, Transmute Artifact and Reshape without being weak to artifact hate.
Note that Arcum's Astrolabe is a snow permanent, therefore the mana it converts will be snow mana.
Nice utility with enchantments that sacrifice, e.g. Seal of Fire, Seal of Cleansing, Seal of Primordium.
I've found Volrath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins to be too slow when repeatedly returning anything cmc≥3.
Deathrite Shaman
Tasigur, Gurmag Angler, Dig Through Time, etc
Search for Azcanta
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Brainstorm
Restore
Titania, Protector of Argoth
Sensei's Divining Top
It also makes Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon and Back to Basics worse.
Four basics is my absolute minimum for running Prismatic Vista but I would really want five or six. Field of Ruin, Assassin's Trophy, Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter factor into the basic count also.
Phew! Finally finished. Hope you enjoyed it.
My pick for best cards (roughly in power order) are:
Prismatic Vista
Wrenn and Six
Force of Negation
Enemy horizon land cycle
Seasoned Pyromancer
Magmatic Sinkhole
Archmage's Charm
Happy highlandering,
Mulch
