Warhammer 40k 7point Highlander Set Review

 

Amusingly, Warhammer 40k is to me, much like Chaos in the lore. When I was in primary school my cousin had a Tyranids codex that I snuck a browse of. The grim dark illustrations of mysterious horrifying creatures was completely different to anything I'd seen. At the end of High School I started playing Magic and visitng card stores. Naturally there were whispers of 40k here and there, tables off to the side in some stores. Occaissionally I would play Magic against players who "used to play a bit of 40k". I knew it was there but I would push it to the back of mind, I didn't want to try it for fear of enjoying it and splitting my attention. It might consume me like MtG already had.

"Try Kill Team" my 'friend' would say to me. Is that incense I smell burning?

The world of Magic the Gathering has slowly changed over the years. Tournament systems restructured. Loosening of stringent game rules. Drafters only drafting once a week and keeping the cards they opened. I've returned to the town, Geelong where I learnt to play as a young man; the drafts don't fire and all I see are Commander Players, with their bottles of Coke and their phones out. The other night I crashed at an old friend's house, there was a glass cabinet of wonderfully painted minatures. And now, staring me in the face, the specter that lurked my mind all these years, Warhammer 40k is printed right there on a Magic the Gathering card in my 7point Highlander deck. What was the last Magic tournament I had played? I actually can't remember...Mitch, I think his name was, gave me several audio books of the Horus Heresy a couple weeks ago. I'm 4 books in. 

The Emperor protects.

Like so many sets these days, Warhammer 40k was printed for Commander players and is officially Legacy and Vintage legal, and by extension it is legal in 7point Highlander. Unfortunately this means preconstructed decks, which don't tend to get sold back to card stores like rares from booster drafts used to. This means supply shortages and high costs for us 7point Highlander players. Do you know how hard it is to get a Chaos Defiler in Melbourne?

Kudos to Games Portal. Rest assured I bought one from them before publishing this post.

From reading Chaos Defiler, you can see the pushed power of these supplementary Commander sets. This is a tragedy for the flavour and pure feel of our format. 7point Highlander used to provide so much nostalgia. Niche cards that didn't even get played in Standard could find a home here. These days though, it is half supplementary product like Modern Horizons and the other half is only the best of the best of the best Standard cards. After all that complaining though, from a competitive standpoint these sets can hide powerful gifts from the Chaos Gods allowing me to slay my enemies!

A black red card which destroys...enchantments...with upside. Such is the power of The Warp. 

~ even kills True-Name Nemesis ffs. 

Printing better and better cards and only putting them in precons make Magic cards feel like Apple products. For me it all started with Scavenging Ooze, which initially was only available in a single $60 precon. Then there was Shardless Agent and Baleful Strix together. Then Dack Fayden, then Titania, Protector of Argoth, then True-Name Nemesis. All must-haves for 7point Highlander in their respective times.

~ is excellent to bring in and out of play with Goblin Welder or Recurring Nightmare.

I'm gonna say Chaos Defiler is the best creature that you can cast for 5mana, ever.

Win condition with infinite mana. For example, Food Chain + Misthollow Griffin. I'm on the lookout for these win conditions because I want to build a Tainted Pact into Food Chain deck, which exiles the Misthollow whilst digging for the Food Chain. The win conditions need to win the game by themselves because theoretrically I may have zero cards in library at the end of Pacting.

Such a deck may also run Channel. I might be running the 2mana transmuters (Muddle the Mixture, Shred Memory, Dimir Infiltrator) to find Tainted Pact, and they also find Channel.

Another win condition for Food Chain combo.

In some decks ~ will be an upgrade on Loran of the Third Path. Definitely in Warrior tribal.

The 'Squad' mechanic is another outlet to win with infinite mana. There are other reasonable Squad creatures:

Vanguard Suppressor is the weakest of these and admitedly may not be good enough. In the case of winning with Tainted Pact + Food Chain, tt doesn't matter that you'll draw your library when you hit the opponent with 1,000,000 Vanguard Suppressors because they'll already be dead.

You really want to miracle cast ~ against everything but aggro.

~ is quite a unique card wording wise. I'm always impressed by how well Matt Sperling articulates Magic theory. Here is a great example of his verbal sparring:

If ~ gets popular, all the hardcore spikes should alter the way they draw cards, as to bluff that ~ is in their deck lol.

As with all Miracle cards, the trick is getting them from your hand to the top of your library. The best way is obviously Brainstorm. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is no longer pointed, which is great for miracle players. Until Warhammer 40k, the Miracle mechanic wasn't on creatures. This opens up options for tutors such as Worldly Tutor, Sylvan Tutor and Congregation at Dawn. I wouldn't run Sylvan Tutor unless I had a bunch of ways to immediately draw the card, otherwise there's too many ways the opponent could mill or shuffle her away in the span of a turn.

My mate Matt has built a sick Naya Winota deck and he runs Worldly Tutor. ~ seems like a great fit for his deck postboard.

Congregation at Dawn putting all three Miracle creatures on top is gas, i,e, Triumph of Saint Katherine, Zephyrim, Sister Repentia:

Only good enough when you Miracle cast her. Therefore you really want ways of putting her on top or plenty of ways to cycle/rummage. Or you want to exile her for value with something like Solitude, Grief or Sickening Shoal.

Nice big Human to Winota out. Little bit better in Warrior tribal.

I didn't list ~ amongst the squad cards that are good in Tainted Pact + Food Chain + Squee, the Immortal because if you end up with a small library after finding Food Chain with Tainted Pact, then the draw triggers will kill you. However, if you're running a Food Chain deck without Tainted Pact then ~ will go a long way to finding your actual win condition. Each copy is a body you can exile to Food Chain for 4 mana and any further creatures you draw into can continue the chain. Here's my Yorion Aluren deck which I'm going to try ~ in. I've put a lot of work into the deck, it's great fun to play. The problem is that it doesn't combo reliably on turn 4. 

...oh wow, I only just realised ~ is an artifact. It really bothers me how lazy they were not creating a special artifact creature border. Being an artifact in my deck is great for Enlightened Tutor. 

Being blue is also nice for Cavern Harpy...ooo, each squad payment nets 2 mana with Food Chain, which means at 3 squad payments you have 6 mana, which covers the sum of ~ + Cavern Harpy and you net 4 cards + 1 mana for 1 life per Harpy activation. So 9 mana total is the magic number. However, even if you have less than that, each card you draw from ~ triggers could be a creature, which is effectively another mana thanks to Food Chain. Hypothetically you could start at just 5 mana for 1 squad payment but draw into several cantrip creatures and climb to 9 mana. Eventually you'll draw your deck and kill them.

If you already own a Eureka you could build Hypergenesis. You simply run all the best ≤5 mana cascade spells + all the biggest game winning threats to put in with Hypergenesis, with enough of those threats being blue to support Force of Will and Misdirection (~ is blue, which is nice). You have Lutri as your companion for some counterspell protection and 2/3 of your lands be ones which ETB tapped but sacrifice for 2 mana. Basically you maximise turn3 Hypergenisis.

You could set up a triple cascade of ~ into Bloodbraid Elf into Shardless Agent with Congregation at Dawn. This was always possible with the First Sliver but now we can do it without black mana. ~ works nicely with this setup as you'll effectively get a Lightning Bolt.

~ is a win condition with Food Chain + Squee, the Immortal.

MISHRA'S WORKSHOP CARDS

After you add all the artifact lands, Mishra's Workshop, Tolarian Academy, City of Traitors etc, the rest of your lands need to be dual lands if you want to run two-colour cards like ~ and Chaos Defiler.

Vigilance is nice against aggro. Tolarian Academy can pay for the unearth.

Good enough to Greasefang, Okiba Boss: 10 damage per turn.

The 'Crew 1' is a flavour fail. In Warhammer lore, knights are extremely difficult to crew.

Another Greasefang vehicle. Also just generally solid. Crews itself, which is nice.

Best Greasefang vehicle yet. Unfortunately there's only 1 Greasefang, so we'll need to wait for more vehicle support, which will surely come.

Honestly this is just a straight up decent card even without any artifact synergies. 5 power, card advantage, evasion, resilience to creature sweepers.

Only downside is that it nombos with artifact hate like Null Rod and Seeds of Innocence if you want to run them yourself.

Such a game bending card has gotta be good somewhere. I had a think for a couple minutes but nothing super weird came to mind; best I came up with is to chuck ~ into a Krark-Clan Ironworks type deck with Scrap Trawler and a Mox to generate a tonne of Necrons...well Necrons are made of metal, let's say several tonnes of Necrons.

In metagames where most decks use the graveyard, maindecking Relic of Progenitus et al is 'ok', and when they're in an artifact deck they go from 'ok' to 'good'. I'm referring to Relic of Progenitus, Scrabbling Claws, Phyrexian Furnace and Nihil Spellbomb. Unlicensed Hearse is in this group too but it is a very different card to the others.

They are zero mana to activate and they activate at instant speed. Combined with ~ they enable you to get at least a couple Necron tokens even if ~ dies the same turn it enters. And if it doesn't die then you'll bury the opponent with Necrons.

If you have the Relic, ~ truely is terrifying, putting at least 9 extra power in play on the first turn, which is more than than the mighty Traxos, Scourge of Kroog. The downside is that ~ only goes in a very specific deck; that BB mana requirement is difficult in an artifact deck due to the demand for 6 nonblack artifacts lands plus Tolarian Academy, City of Traitors, Mishra's Workshop and Ancient Tomb.

~ uses the graveyard but opposing graveyard hate actually assists him (unless there's a Rest in Peace already on the battlefield because the artifact will never reach the graveyard).

The +2/+2 and menace is nice for taking The Initiative and it generally gives you the biggest dude on the battlefield.

Here's my Necron deck, which includes ~ and several other Necrons:

Doesn't apply much pressure but flying is decent against initiative. Being an artifact contributes to your synergies, so all up the seemingly weak baseline is acceptible. 1 toughness dies to Wrenn and Six but that's ok due to the powerful Unearth ability. Often you'll be hoping that ~ dies.

A lot of collective power and toughness for its mana cost. You'll either need lots of disruption to have a 5drop be relavent against combo or you'll to jump the curve with Mishra's Workshop. In addition to either of those criteria, you'll also want removal for blockers or anthems to give you enough power that you don't care if your guys aren't trading favourably because you're dealing so much damage to the opponent.

Surprisingly good. Needs to be killed but you still get that extra unearth turn. Mass menace wins races.

Another Disciple of the Vault for a possible Krark-Clan Ironworks, Scrap Trawler, Myr Retriever, Mox Opal chain/loop deck.

Brings back any number of artifact lands. Has gotta be playable somehow. If you have another artifact which gets back ~ from the yard somehow, e.g. Myr Retriever, plus you have a way of sacrificing artifacts repeatedly, then you could create an infinite loop with enough artifact lands and 'ritual rocks' like Grim Monolith and Mox Opal.

Casting ~ turn 3 off a Mishra's Workshop feels amazing.

Currently ~ is super effective in my Necron Umori deck thanks to surprise factor. ~ is an unknown card and an instant speed removal spell is something you don't expect from an Umori artifact deck.

Unintuitively you can mill yourself even if you target an opponent's creature. The trigger has the chance to mill creatures which can return from your graveyard, e.g. Scrapheap Scrounger, Razorlash Transmogrant or an Unearth creature.

Surprisingly, there are very few creatures with an unconditional ETB destroy target creature ability. Ravenous Chupacabra is the most well know and was only printed recently. The others are 

Noxious Gearhulk

Patron of the Vein

and also:

Really bothers me that they didn't take effort to create a different border for artifacts and nonartifacts. Makes it so easy to miss artifacts, which is really important with Karnstructs and Nettlecyst.

Another False Cure/Tainted Remedy. There probably isn't enough targeted lifegain for Highlander, but there might be in the future:

Invigorate

Refreshing Rain

Aria of Flame

Fiery Justice

Heroes' Reunion

Rest for the Weary

Possible applications as a creature to sacrifice to Dread Return after milling your library with Hermit Druid and casting a 'free' spell from your graveyard like Cabal Therapy to clear instant speed graveyard hate away from the opponents hand before you commit to Dread Return.

Aside from the combo Dread Return application, ~ could be used dredge style. 3/1 deathtouch is a considerable body compared to the usual '2/1 can't block' on other recurring creatures. The key to this strategy though, is having enough removal to remove big blockers and also having enough disruption against fast combo decks.

Zombie for Gravecrawler.

I'll make a Liliana's Contract deck one day. I think this set has the most demons in a single set ever, not including the changeling sets.

I think for ~ to be playable you need to cast another demon with it on the same turn, otherwise it could die to a cheap removal effect for no value, which means your deck needs a tonne of demons which cost 2 generic mana and 1 coloured mana. As of now there aren't many good ones; I only like Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire and Realmwalker.

An upgrade to Phantasmagorian in Hermit Druid combo because it's much better for your beatdown plan, which comes up postboard. Phantasmagorian/Old One Eye is useful when you activate Hermit Druid but your Dread Return or support cards are in your hand. Old One Eye relies on you activating Hermit Druid in your drawstep so that you get the discard trigger, you will have already drawn for the turn so you won't die to having no library.

Honestly these days Hermit Druid is too easy to disrupt to be good. You're better off running Thassa's Oracle or Underworl Breach combo, but hypothetically those two better options could gain further points and change that.

Very slow but could be used to have Dark Depths enter with zero ice counters on it. Of course ~ would need to leave afterwards for Dark Depths to pop, but that creates a good barrier against attacks.

Marit Lage is much easier to deal with these days but at least this way if they do deal with it, you don't lose two lands like you do with Thespian's Stage + Dark Depths.

Some lands decks run Green Sun's Zenith to find Ramunap Excavator, so ~ adds more utility there.

Realistically ~ is probably unplayable but if I'm wrong then it's worth noting that it kill Urza's Saga in a similar way that Blood Moon does, i.e. Sagas with no chapter abilities sacrifice to state based effects.

You don't really want to hold up mana for counterspells in this deck because your game plan needs to keep you alove whilst you're tapping out for cards exiled by ~. You also want the game to go long to let card advantage from ~ take over the game. Therefore you want to be a tapout control deck relying on discard, removal and static disruption to stop your opponent's bullshit.

Already widely adopted. Card advantage. Flexible.

The Iniative is a much ridiculed ridiculous tool against non-creature decks and once you add the initiative to the game, you want to run as many initiative creatures as you can because they're the best way of getting it back. Furthermore, except for the 3mana White Plume Adventurer, the rest of the initiative creatures are basically 4mana; therefore you need to run mana dorks to cast your initiative creatures fast enough to race combo decks. This is where Mawloc comes it. It preys on mana dorks and is itself a creature to attack and potentially gain the initiative with.

Greens Sun's'ing for it is fine in a manadork format.

The exile clause is handy against Skullclamp and other death triggers.

The other day I tapped out to try ravenous my Mawloc and exile their Uro, however I ran straight into Daze. In hindsight I could've won the game some other way and played around Daze. What I'm saying is that if your blue tempo opponent has been sitting on a card for a long time, think about Daze and whether you really need that extra counter on ~.

Very powerful. It won't take long to recover the tempo loss of casting ~.

Best in an Ancient Tomb, Mana Crypt deck. Ironically ~ itself isn't ideal to cast off Tomb and Crypt (not without Mossfire Valley anyway!) but your deck should be full of powerful creatures that cost 2 and a coloured mana. Typically you will cast ~ on turn4 and immediately cast a 3drop.

You could even run~ in an artifact deck with creatures that cost "2"

~ resets each turn, so creatures with flash get a little extra value. However, I checked and you'll probably have to go Temur colours to access decent flash creatures.

Vulnerable to removal but is good against some combos like Flash where they're relying on creatures dying over and over (Mogg Bombers plus 7x 0/0's, or Samwise Gamgee + Cauldron Familiar + Viscera Seer).

Obviously only good in aggro decks. Weilds a Jitte well. By the Throne, there better be an equipment called 'Chainsword' in this set.

Similar to Indomitable Creativity in that you can target multiple things and therefore play around removal, which is wayyyy better. Instant speed is also strong against counterspells.

Far too Star Warsey. Not sure which came first.

TRIPLE damagé and efficient against all removal except...Liliana of the Veil. Even against Karakas, which is impressive.

Moria Marauder

Wrenn and Six

Goblin Chainwhirler

Walking Ballista

Orcish Bowmasters

Fury

Pyrokinesis

Mana dorks

Not often a lands deck runs blue, but ~ would be strong there. Colour fixing presumably easy when your game plan involves searching for lands anyway.

Could be good in a Jeskai aggro deck with Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival and all the Light up the Stage, Wrenn's Resolve, Reckless Impulse effects. This would also support See the Truth. You could run Snapcaster Mage and Finale of Promise, etc.

If Nathan Basser were to add U to his mono R storm deck, then ~ would be quite powerful.

If your opponent isn't running creatures, then chances are they'll be using their graveyard for something, so ~ is rarely bad. If the opponent is running creatures you'll want plenty of cheap removal to feed them to ~.

~ is a little clunky. It matches up poorly against Fatal Push, Teferi, Time Raveler and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, for example. Having said that, I can imagine situations where this is a 5/5 and it exiled an Uro, so I can't really call it unplayable.

Not being instant speed makes ~ worse than other graveyard hate such as Endurance or Scavenging Ooze, so I think this would be run in addition to those cards in a graveyard-centric metagame.

Powerful in mono colour decks with tonnes of card advantage. You need a good reason to be mono colour though. The big reasons are:

Islands: Back to Basics, Mystic Sanctuary

Mountains: Blood Moon, Ruination, Blood Sun, Magus of the Moon, 

Swamps: Contamination

Plains: Suppression Field, Enlightened Tutor

There's not enough in any colour to consistently draw one. Of course you also have immunity to opposing nonbasic hate, which could be worth it in a heavy Blood Moon meta. And of course you have excellent colour consistency.

Good value if you're running big creatures and have a strategy which leads to long games, i.e. games where you get enough mana to activate ~.

~ can put Emrakul, the Aeons torn onto the battlefield if she's in the top 4, which is cool.

Good land to find with Primeval Titan if you expect them to destroy the Titan.

SIDEBOARD

Easy to dismiss this because it almost looks like draft chaff. However, I think it's quite good against aggro; Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Kamber, the Plunderer are better but often you need to replace a lot of cards that are bad against aggro and ~ is 3rd in line (but 4th really because Laurine, the Diversion).

I've already boarded in ~ in a match and it was great against monored. The combination of >3 toughness + lifelink is game winning.

I can imagine this in the sideboard of a Past in Flames deck.

Esper Affinity anti-creature card. Even better with a Modular subtheme.

BEST CARDS OF WARHAMMER 40k

In power order:

Mawloc

Chaos Defiler

Shadow in the Warp

Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph

That concludes the set review,

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I can catch up on a few more set reviews whilst I'm locked in my room with Covid for a few days (probably got it at the airport or on the plane coming back from the Regional Championships in Sydney. Totally worth it). Shout out to Juzza for hospitality, and Jack and Ryan. 

Good to meet a fellow Goblin in Tyrone. Graham might be uploading lists from the two Highlander events in the coming days.

Mulch