The Ultimate Lost Caverns of Ixalan Limited Set Review

Last updated on April 8, 2024

Nicanzil, Current Conductor | Illustration by Fariba Khamseh

I’m sorry to say, but the original Ixalan was one of my least favorite Magic sets of all time. The Draft format was mindlessly aggressive with only 2 viable archetypes, none of the set’s themes really worked, and it just felt miserable all around. That said, it did give us dinosaurs and pirates, which are just cool. I also reached day two of a Grand Prix in the format, so it wasn’t all bad.

This second go around of the Ixalan world looks to have completely overhauled what it’s about, instead focusing on the history, culture, and mythology of Mesoamerica. I know very little about this region, but I’m excited to see this set unfold and seeing how these vibrant cultures get translated into a fantasy setting. Once again, it’s time to dive (or I suppose spelunk) into this rich, gorgeous set and break down all its cards for Sealed and Booster Draft.

As always, I want to remind you that this is a review based on initial impressions of the cards. It’s hard to figure out how these cards will play out without knowing things like the speed of the format or the relative power levels of the colors and archetypes. My reviews are largely based on the card’s quality in a vacuum or assuming that their specific archetype is playable.

Ratings Breakdown

Cenote Scout | Illustration by Caroline Gariba

10: The absolute best of the best. 10s make a meaningful impact on any game regardless of when you play them and are extremely tough to beat. Cards like Virtue of Persistence or Virtue of Loyalty

8-9: Extremely good cards, usually game-winning bombs and the most efficient removal spells, though not quite good enough to be a 10/10. Cards like Imodane's Recruiter or Decadent Dragon

6-7: Important role-players. These are typically going to be the best uncommons that really drive you towards playing a particular color, like build-arounds and good removal. Cards like Tough Cookie or Gingerbread Hunter

3-5: The average Limited card. Most commons and uncommons end up in this range and
most of your Limited decks are made up mostly of these. Cards like Harried Spearguard or Return from the Wilds

1-2: These cards are generally pretty bad and ideally you won’t play any of them. They should be kept in the sideboard and might be useful in specific situations. Cards like Diminisher Witch or Sugar Rush

0: Absolutely awful cards. Virtually unplayable in every scenario, and you should never put these cards in your main deck. Cards like Mana Flare or Leyline of Sanctity.

Set Mechanics

Caves

We’ve seen this mechanic before, only under other names. We’ve seen gates and deserts in the past as land types that reward us for picking up as many as possible. In this case, many of these caves are just good lands that you can pick up and enhance your deck, but there are also some cool payoffs that reward you for either having caves on the battlefield, in your graveyard, or using their mana to cast your spells. I’m confident that this mechanic will be good because previous versions have played out very well. Many of these caves are also pretty strong, so assuming that the set is slow enough to accommodate this, I have high hopes.

Craft

This is the big one. In my opinion, this set’s Limited format lives or dies based on how good this mechanic is. Much like prototype in The Brothers’ War, this is a slow, late game mechanic that plays best in a slow format. Many of these cards are cheap artifacts that give you a nice reward early on but a much bigger payoff if you can craft and transform them. I love slower formats since more turns of Magic let you play out all your cards, whereas faster formats mean that a lot of cards just become unusable. I really hope this format is more like the former and we get to have fun crafting giant artifacts.

Descend

Descend is the latest in a long line of interesting graveyard-themed mechanics, including threshold, delirium, and to a much lesser extent, undergrowth. This one has a lot of scope, and my early impression is to suggest that this is a good version of it. Just like with its predecessors, it’s hard to know at this point how easy it is to get to your various descend numbers. For now, I’ll assume it’s relatively easy to do, especially if you’re milling yourself a bit, but I’m sure we’ll adjust this look over time.

Discover

I have no clue what they were thinking in bringing cascade back. Cascade is one of the most broken and ridiculous mechanics that we’ve ever seen in Magic. It just straight up gives you a free spell when you do it, or at the very least draws you a card. I can’t stress enough that basically everything that uses this mechanic will be much better than it looks.

Explore and Map Tokens

Explore is the mechanic that’s returning from the original Ixalan, and it’s honestly really good. It’s essentially a strict upgrade on surveil, which is already a strong mechanic. In this set, it also fits perfectly. It helps you to find caves, put permanents into your graveyard for descending, fill graveyards with crafting materials, and so on. In addition, you can explore using the new Map tokens, this gives you a little more flexibility over which of your creatures is exploring, which I think adds a nice new angle for the mechanic, and I’m interested to see how it plays out.

Draft Archetypes

Like most Limited sets, this set has ten draftable archetypes based on the ten color pairs in Magic. To provide a little bit of context to this review, here’s a list of those archetypes:

Azorius (): Crafting
Dimir (): Self Mill + Descend
Rakdos (): “Have you descended this turn?”
Gruul (): Dinosaur Kindred
Selesnya (): Go wide aggro + Modified power matters
Orzhov (): Vampires + Sacrificing Artifacts/Creatures
Golgari (): Descend 4 and Descend 8 matter
Simic (): Merfolk + Explore
Izzet (): Pirates + Artifacts matter
Boros (): Tapping Artifacts/Creatures you control

Note: WotC recently announced that the new word “kindred” replaces tribal to describe the card type (Bitterblossom) and “typal” a strategy based on a specific creature type. I’ll therefore be using this word where it is appropriate to do so, like when referring to the “Dinosaur Typal” draft archetype.

White

Abuelo’s Awakening

Rating: 1/10

I don’t really get what you’re trying to do here. You’re reanimating an artifact and then making it even more vulnerable to interaction? And it’s only a 1/1 unless you dump a lot more than 4 mana into it? I’m going to pass on this, and I think you should too.

Acrobatic Leap

Rating: 2/10

I’m not a fan of combat tricks like this. You can easily let your creature survive a combat, but +1/+3 isn’t even that likely to help you kill your opponent’s creature in return. It should definitely have its place in the format, but I’d rather not play it unless I had to.

Adaptive Gemguard

Rating: 4/10

This card starts out a little small, but it can tap itself to its ability, meaning you could buff it right away even if you only have one other artifact in play. I can definitely imagine scenarios where this ends up being quite powerful, just as long as you can get over how clunky it is when you first play it.

Attentive Sunscribe

Rating: 4/10

While this will clearly be right at home in the Boros () deck that wants to be tapping its artifacts for value, the fact that it’s a solid 2-drop means most white decks will be able to use it, especially if they artifact synergies of their own.

Bat Colony

Rating: 3/10

As much as I want there to be cool build-arounds for caves, I don’t think this one will work. You need to have at least two caves on the battlefield when you play this just to make it a reasonable play, but even worse is that the +1/+1 counter ability isn’t much to write home about at all. If you had about eight or nine caves in your deck, I could see this being useful, but it would really need to be a very reliable two or three tokens or it just becomes a liability.

Clay-Fired Bricks / Cosmium Kiln

Rating: 5/10

Cycling this for a land and 2 life is usually going to be a very welcome play. Even if you don’t need any more lands, it’s still a free card that you can probably find a use for. If you get to craft it into Cosmium Kiln, then you’re probably winning the game, but 7 mana is a lot to ask to get there. My guess is that more often than not, this will be a cheap, solid artifact which is best utilized by tapping it for value, sacrificing it, or crafting it with other cards, and that’s more than fine with me.

Cosmium Blast

Rating: 5/10

Four damage to an attacker or blocker for 2 mana is a really nice rate for a white removal spell. It should kill enough creatures that it’s a valuable pickup, and I expect this to be one of the better white commons.

Dauntless Dismantler

Rating: 5/10

There are enough artifacts in this set to make this look highly desirable. The sweeper ability is quite expensive, but it’s very useful to note that you can just pay 1 mana to kill all artifact tokens. In addition, a lot of craft artifacts still have a low mana value, despite investing a large amount of mana into their craft abilities, so you’ll probably be surprised at how easy it is to hit what you want. A 1/4 creature is also pretty good on defense, so I can imagine this being a fine early play and a great late-game one.

Deconstruction Hammer

Rating: 3/10

At least this is just a Short Sword, and there are decks in this format that could want that. Building in artifact removal is what makes this just about playable in my eyes, as I’m sure that’ll be more valuable than we realize, particularly with so many artifact creatures roaming about the set.

Dusk Rose Reliquary

Rating: 6/10

Needing to sacrifice something to cast this isn’t great, but there’s at least a white sacrifice theme to key off of and this is just a universal removal spell. Ward 2 is also a great addition to just make it that little bit more difficult for an opponent to take off the board.

Envoy of Okinec Ahau

Rating: 5/10

A 3/3 for 3 is some fine stats to start with. Creating gnome tokens is really expensive, but it’s a nice thing to sink your mana into if you end up needing to grind out a late game plan. A few activations of this over a few turns and then something to buff your whole team might be a very solid game plan to close out a game with.

Fabrication Foundry

Rating: 4/10

The majority of decks aren’t likely to be interested in this, but a dedicated crafting deck is going to be very happy to see it. Many of the crafting costs are quite expensive, so a little bit of cheap mana acceleration should go a long way towards that. I don’t think the reanimation ability is all that good, but I guess it’s a nice bonus to have in a pinch.

Family Reunion

Rating: 2/10

I’m interested in effects that buff my whole team for the Selesnya () deck, but this just feels too weak for my liking. Hexproof to everyone is near enough the same as hexproof for one creature, which isn’t something I’d like to pay 2 mana for. It’s not to say that I wouldn’t ever do this, because the combination of both options is fine, but I’ll most likely keep it in the sideboard until I find a good matchup for it.

Get Lost

Rating: 6/10

While giving your opponent a couple of Maps is a significant downside, 2 mana for an instant speed, unconditional removal spell is a great deal. The maps might even be useless for some decks, since your opponent can’t even sacrifice them if they don’t have a creature to explore with. Well, that’s not too likely, but one can hope.

Glorifier of Suffering

Rating: 4/10

We’ve seen this effect before on the likes of Gavony Silversmith and Basri's Acolyte, and they ended up being incredibly powerful in their respective formats. Needing to sacrifice an artifact is a hefty cost, but in white/black in particular, there should be plenty of fodder for you to cash in and get a really solid boost from. The cost is the only thing holding this back from being a premium common in my eyes, but the effect is very strong and worth playing for.

Guardian of the Great Door

Rating: 7/10

This is essentially just a good 6-drop with convoke and improvise, which is really powerful. If you paid about 4 mana for this, it’s excellent, but at 2 mana and tapping a bunch of useless artifacts, Map tokens or whatever else you really feel like you’re getting away with something.

Helping Hand

Rating: 3/10

We’ve seen a lot of these spells in recent sets and many of them, like Return Triumphant, have been a fair bit better than they looked at first glance. It’s hard to know if costing just 1 mana instead of being 2 mana with a minor upside is enough for us to want to play this. I’m leaning towards this being on the weak side but playable, though it may land a fair bit higher by the end of the format.

Ironpaw Aspirant

Rating: 4/10

During spoiler season, I was hoping we’d see a card like this for the green/white strategy. Ironshell Beetle and its other variations have always been solid commons in their respective formats, and this should be no different. You even get an extra point of toughness to boot, meaning you can just play this on turn 2 as a 2/3 and be very happy with it.

Kinjalli’s Dawnrunner

Rating: 6/10

For 3 mana, this is either a 1/1 with double strike that draws you a land or just a 2/2 with double strike. Both modes are great, so it honestly doesn’t matter which one you get. This is just a good value creature that any white deck will be happy to play.

Kutzil’s Flanker

Rating: 5/10

A 3/1 flash for 3 mana is a good stat line, and it comes with an impressive selection of upsides. The graveyard hate mode is particularly nice, giving you a way to disrupt craft and descend decks. This is only ever doing a relatively minor thing, but the card is still good and worth having in any deck.

Malamet War Scribe

Rating: 5/10

We’ve seen plenty of this effect in the past on cards like Ampryn Tactician and Dawnfeather Eagle, but none of them gave +2/+1, which is actually a much bigger buff than you might realize. I particularly like this for the green/white archetype as a way of buffing your whole team in one go, and I expect it to see quite a bit of play in that deck.

Market Gnome

Rating: 6/10

I love this card. I really wish it were a common, but no matter. For just 1 mana, a little creature that gums up the board and blocks a lot of early aggressive creatures is fine. But more so than soaking up damage, the failsafe of getting to draw a card and gain some life when it dies means this is almost never an irrelevant play. I’d really want it for a crafting deck or the Orzhov () sacrifices deck, but I’d honestly play it in any white deck that wasn’t trying to be aggressive.

Might of the Ancestors

Rating: 1/10

I really try to stay away from any card that doesn’t affect the board. I can definitely see what this card is trying to do, particularly for the green/white deck, but I don’t think it’s even close to being good enough. I’d much rather spend 3 mana on any creature.

Miner’s Guidewing

Rating: 4/10

The story of the last six years or so has been to not underestimate 1-drops. They used to basically be unplayable, but these days they’re really strong. This one looks nice. It’s a small flier that can get a few hits in early, but then it can give you a little bit of value in the late game. Very nice and a good, solid common.

Mischievous Pup

Rating: 4/10

I always loved Whitemane Lion, and this is basically a stronger version of that. It costs an extra mana, but the 3 power is incredibly useful with flash. This is a much stronger card for ambushing attackers, which gives it quite a bit of extra functionality. You can now use this to ambush a good attacker, protect your creature from removal, or just to pick up a good enters the battlefield trigger. All in all, it’s a pretty good deal.

Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation / Temple of Civilization

Rating: 5/10

I’m sure many players looked at the absurd line of text on this new god and balked. It’s a really silly effect, though not all that relevant for Limited unfortunately. I’m sure if you play this, you’ll be able to get a few extra tokens off it, but for the most part this is just going to be a huge beater that turns into a land when it dies.

Even worse, the condition to transform the land back into Ojer Taq isn’t that easy to pull off, so it’s not quite as immortal as some of the other gods are. All of that amounts to what is still a fine card, but one that is nowhere near as powerful as some of the others.

Oltec Archaeologists

Rating: 5/10

Now this is a 5-drop I’d be very happy to pick up. There are so many useful artifacts in this set for you to get back from the graveyard that this should nearly always be an easy two-for-one. Master Skald looked weak when we first saw Kaldheim but ended up being a very high value common, and I view this card in the same light.

Oltec Cloud Guard

Rating: 5/10

A 4-drop flier that spawns a creature token is excellent. We’ve seen some great similar cards recently, like Edgewall Pack and Chimney Rabble, which have excelled in their respective formats. I’d imagine this is just as good here.

Oteclan Landmark / Oteclan Levitator

Rating: 4/10

The front side here is really mediocre, so the key is being able to craft it into Oteclan Levitator. We’ve seen in many sets that Pegasus Courser is a premium common, so I’d imagine that a similar card like this one is also great, even though it’s held back a little by needing to do some setup first.

Petrify

Rating: 5/10

Pacifism and Arrest have certainly become less desirable in the last few years thanks to there being a ton more ways to get around them. In this set, that’s still the case, but it’s also nice to have removal that doesn’t fuel descend. It’s also well-costed and can even be used on a craft artifact to stop it transforming, which I imagine will come up from time to time.

Quicksand Whirlpool

Rating: 6/10

We saw Banish from Edoras pull its weight in Lord of the Rings, but that was only a sorcery. Having this be an instant means it can exile an attacking creature before it hits you, making this a really premium removal spell for white. This would be my pick for white’s best common so far, but it’ll be interesting to see how that changes over time.

Resplendent Angel

Rating: 8/10

This is a very unexpected reprint, but I’m sure a welcome one for many players. I’m not sure how often you’ll be able to actually trigger this without activating it and turning it into a large lifelinker. That said, that’s a very solid late game play. Use your mana to make this huge, swing in and gain your life, create a token, and put yourself really far ahead. You’re also very happy with a 3/3 flier on turn 3, so this should just be a very solid bomb, even if it’s unlikely to win the game by itself.

Ruin-Lurker Bat

Rating: 6/10

This is a ridiculous 1-drop. Flying and lifelink is of course reminiscent of Healer's Hawk, and just like in Guilds of Ravnica, we have a lot of ways to buff this creature and use it to take over a game. Not only that, but we also get a bunch of free scries. I love this, and it looks like a great addition to most white decks.

Sanguine Evangelist

Rating: 6/10

For 3 mana, you get a total of a 2/1 and a pair of 1/1 flying bats. You can’t really go wrong with that; it’s just a really good rate for your mana. Battle cry is also something that should make this stand out in the green/white decks in particular, but when the base rate of a card is already great, you’re never going to turn your nose up at a free bonus.

Soaring Sandwing

Rating: 3/10

We saw that landcycling for 2 mana isn’t good enough anymore unless the spell you get is useful. A 3/5 flier for 6 mana is far too inefficient for current Limited, even if it does gain some life, so I expect to run this only if I want the mana fixing.

Spring-Loaded Sawblades / Bladewheel Chariot

Rating: 7/10

Two mana for 5 damage to a tapped creature is going to kill nearly every creature in the format, but this is also an artifact! You can then sacrifice it for value, tap it for value, or of course use its craft ability to turn it into a legitimate threat. I love this card, especially the artwork, and I’d imagine that this is one of white’s best nonrare cards.

Thousand Moons Crackshot

Rating: 4/10

Paying 3 mana to tap a creature really is a lot. However, this is still a 2/2 for two, and we usually want some number of those. The ability to tap something down is really threatening while on the board, and if you’re preparing to alpha strike for the win, your opponent is going to have to always keep that in mind and play around it. It only needs to happen once for it to be worth it, and I imagine that’s what will happen.

Thousand Moons Infantry

Rating: 5/10

If this was just a 2/4 with vigilance, I think it would be pretty decent, but this is so much better than that. Not only will it untap after attacking, but also because you tapped it for one of these many red/white tap effects. With ones that let you tap at instant speed, this can tap twice towards that in the same turn cycle while also being available as a good blocker. I think this looks like a fantastic design and a great enabler for this archetype.

Thousand Moons Smithy

Rating: 9/10

If you’ve built a dedicated artifact deck, say in white/blue or white/red, this looks absolutely bonkers. You start by just making a Karnstruct token for 4 mana, which is often going to be about a 4/4 or 5/5 in the right deck. Then by transforming it, which shouldn’t be too difficult to do, you get access to a ridiculous land that gives you a massive amount of advantage over the next few turns. At some point you’ll just have an army of Karnstructs all boosting each other’s stats, and you will be well on your way to winning.

Tinker’s Tote

Rating: 5/10

Three mana for a pair of 1/1 tokens is a little below rate, but it’s still something we’d play in the right format. Throwing in an extra artifact for you to do stuff with turns this into a great deal. This single card represents three whole artifacts that can be tapped by red/white cards, sacrificed in white/black, or crafted with in white/blue. It can even be easily sacrificed to its own ability to enable descend. This looks incredible, and since it fits into every archetype beautifully, I imagine it’ll be among white’s best commons.

Unstable Glyphbridge / Sandswirl Wanderglyph

Rating: 9/10

I don’t really expect my board sweepers to also turn into huge flying creatures that can win the game for me, but I guess that’s the world we’re living in. Sure, the board sweeper is going to leave your opponent with a creature sometimes, but that’s an acceptable tradeoff for a card that’s very capable of swinging most games in your favor.

Vanguard of the Rose

Rating: 6/10

The impact of Adanto Vanguard from the original Ixalan set can be felt to this day. We’ve seen several 3/1s for 2 mana that can become indestructible, but none have managed to mirror the vanguard’s power. This one’s a powerful card for sure, but the fact that you need to sacrifice something makes me feel like this is actually beatable, unlike a couple of its predecessors.

Warden of the Inner Sky

Rating: 7/10

The only thing holding this card back is how bad it is when you first play it. No one is ever going to be interested in a 1/2 vanilla for 1 mana. Assuming you’ve got a deck with a bunch of artifacts, this can get out of hand relatively quickly. There’s nothing more disheartening in Limited than sitting back and watching your opponent buff a creature like this turn after turn while you can’t do anything about it. Worst of all, it isn’t costing any resources or cards to do it, and it can eventually take over the game.

Blue

Akal Pakal, First Among Equals

Rating: 6/10

Each of blue’s artifact-based decks is going to want card advantage and more time to deploy its cards, which funnily enough, is exactly what Akal Pakal is doing. I don’t think I’d want to take it too early, but if I was building a craft deck or just an artifacts deck, I’d definitely be happy to pick this up.

Ancestral Reminiscence

Rating: 4/10

It has been quite a while since Sift was actually good. It was once among the best blue spells in Limited, but recent sets have become very hostile to more expensive card draw effects. This set looks promisingly slow, and Ancestral Reminiscence enables descend. I think it’ll be a solid common, but recent experiences have left me a little skeptical.

Brackish Blunder

Rating: 3/10

Unsummon effects are handy from time to time, but as much as I love them, they’re incredibly hard to find uses for. Sometimes getting a Map token out of the deal is quite nice, though the best use of a bounce spell is to bounce a blocker when they try to double block, so that won’t be happening as often as you might think. Still, it’s a nice bonus if you want it.

Braided Net / Braided Quipu

Rating: 7/10

Tumble Magnet is a perfectly reasonable card, but this is so much more than that. It’s functionally a removal spell for a few turns that then lets you draw a bunch of cards and even reset it and remove pesky creatures again. This is clearly stronger in an artifact-based deck, but it’s likely worth using in most blue decks regardless of the theme.

Chart a Course

Rating: 7/10

Chart a Course is one of the better cheap card draw spells we’ve ever seen. Two mana to draw two cards is an excellent rate. You don’t even need to have attacked, because discarding a card is sometimes an upside, allowing you to trigger descend cards and the like. This is a very welcome reprint from the original set, and you should pick it highly.

Cogwork Wrestler

Rating: 4/10

I always enjoy these cheap, annoying creatures. The card isn’t that good, but it has the potential to give you a sweet two-for-one swing if you get everything to line up perfectly. Even better because this only costs 1 mana, which should be very easy to hold up. I might be overrating this one, but I have a soft spot for Faerie Duelists and I hope this one is good.

Confounding Riddle

Rating: 6/10

Supreme Will was an incredible counterspell in its day, so I’m excited to see a strict upgrade on it. This should be able to counter most spells at all points in the game, but if you don’t get the chance, cashing it in for the best card in your top four is a great failsafe.

Council of Echoes

Rating: 5/10

Angler Drake, this is not. I don’t know how easy it’ll be to reach descend 4, but unless you can reliably do that, I don’t think this will be a high priority. Six-mana 4/4 fliers are quite a bit below rate these days, so you really need to be able to descend before wanting this. If it turns out that descend 4 is really easy to get to, this card’s value should go way up.

Deeproot Pilgrimage

Rating: 7/10

This has quite a few things going for it. Mainly, 2 mana makes it really cheap to cast and it triggers whenever you attack with a merfolk, which is really easy to enable. Attacking isn’t a trivial matter at some point in the game, but it’s easy enough that I’d like to assume it’s good enough until I’m proven wrong.

Didact Echo

Rating: 4/10

I love a creature that draws a card when it enters, though 5 mana is quite a lot to pay for that. This looks like a really solid common, especially if you can easily make it fly.

Eaten by Piranhas

Rating: 3/10

These auras are always bad, but the saving grace here is the fact that it has flash. Now it can be used as a combat trick, allowing you to eat the creature (eh, punny) when it tries to attack you. It then triggers descend, which is a nice added bonus. I still don’t think it’s that good, but it’s certainly a lot stronger than useless cards like Kasmina's Transmutation.

Frilled Cave-Wurm

Rating: 1/10

A 4/5 for 4 mana is fine, but one that I have to put work into is something I’m not in the least bit interested in.

Hermitic Nautilus

Rating: 3/10

As far as defensive 2-drops go, this isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s an artifact, which matters a lot in this format, but the activated ability is really awkward. You can’t attack into a random 2/2 because they just block and nothing happens. You can choose to spend your mana and force a trade, but that’s generally going to work out better for your opponent. Still, this isn’t completely terrible, and blue decks are likely to want early defensive options like this.

Hurl into History

Rating: 6/10

Five mana is a lot to pay for a counterspell, but since you’re getting a whole card back from the exchange and casting it for free, this is like a souped-up Dismiss. Artifacts and creatures make up the majority of spells in this set (well over 90% it looks like) and this is a straight up two-for-one. The mana cost is prohibitive, but the reward is definitely there if you can afford to pay it.

Inverted Iceberg / Iceberg Titan

Rating: 5/10

If you’re going to be playing a deck which just wants to put artifacts into play, you can’t do much better than cheap artifacts that draw you a card. Milling a card also fuels descend nicely, and it even crafts into a huge beatstick that can swing a game in your favor. I love it.

Kitesail Larcenist

Rating: 9/10

This ability reads kind of confusingly, but what it essentially amounts to in Limited is that it’s a blue Banisher Priest. On top of that, it also has flying and ward 1, making it a really versatile card. Better yet, your opponent might be tempted to sacrifice their treasured permanent because they want the mana and have no way of immediately dealing with Larcenist, at which point they won’t get it back. This is an excellent card, likely one of blue’s better cards overall.

Lodestone Needle / Guidestone Compass

Rating: 2/10

I don’t see this working at all. We’ve seen a couple of these kinds of spells which tap down a creature for a couple of turns, and they’ve not played very well. Even with flash, that’s not enough of an improvement to carry this. Even when you craft it, you put quite a lot of effort in without getting much of a reward on the other side. I’d leave this in the sideboard and hope that someone shows me I’m wrong about it.

Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel

Rating: 7/10

2/1, flash, flying, 2 mana. You could stop there and have a really solid Limited card to be honest. Looting when it hits a player is an incredibly strong upside, essentially making this a Looter il-Kor. I doubt you’ll be getting to cast any free spells with it, since your opponent is unlikely to let you get four hits in, but it’s a nice dream to have.

Marauding Brinefang

Rating: 4/10

Call me crazy, but a 6/7 ward 3 for 7 mana sounds like a pretty nice late game threat. Landcyclers need to be a fair bit stronger than they have been in the past to grab my attention, but this looks like the kind of mediocre large creature that I’m happy to play in control decks, so a version with islandcycling for two mana sounds decent.

Merfolk Cave-Diver

Rating: 6/10

I just know I’m going to lose to this too many times. A 3 mana 2/4 is already a solid defensive option that makes attacking on the ground very difficult, but getting to attack for three unblockable damage every now and again is ridiculous. Worse yet, the use of Map tokens and the like in this set let you use this creature to explore, potentially making it much bigger. I’ve been going back and forth on the rating for this, but in the right deck this has to be powerful. It just won’t do much in your white/blue crafting decks.

Oaken Siren

Rating: 4/10

Blue’s mana dorks that only let you play spells relevant to its archetypes are usually ok, if a little weak. Flying and vigilance means you’ll often be able to sneak a few hits in with this while still playing your spells on curve, which makes this a solid common in my view.

Ojer Pakpatiq, Deepest Epoch / Temple of Cyclical Time

Rating: 8/10

Right. I have a bone to pick with this design. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really cool and powerful, but there are basically no instants in this entire set! Many cards that would have been instants are instead artifacts with flash and enters the battlefield triggers, making this a stupid design for a card that barely does anything relevant in the set. For comparison, Wilds of Eldraine had a total of 62 instants in it, whereas this set has 17, three of which can’t rebound because of timing restrictions. Sure, a 4/3 flier for 4 mana that comes back three turns after it dies means it is basically a bomb rare, but you’re so unlikely to rebound any spells that this is just annoying.

Orazca Puzzle-Door

Rating: 5/10

I love this. It’s only a Sleight of Hand for 2 mana, but one that synergizes with the set incredibly well. It’s an artifact that can be crafted, it enables descend and the artifact themes. It’s just awesome, and I expect you’ll play quite a few of these across your blue decks.

Out of Air

Rating: 4/10

Given that most of what you want to be countering is often creatures, this being a literal Counterspell for so many targets is really strong. The only question is, do you even want to be playing counterspells? Hopefully the answer is yes, in which case you’ll definitely be playing this card.

Pirate Hat

Rating: 3/10

There aren’t that many pirates in this set (15 in total), but equipping for 2 mana isn’t that expensive. What you get in return is probably worth what you’ve paid, so the only question is whether this is something your deck can make use of. I reckon a few decks will say yes, but many others won’t care too much.

Relic’s Roar

Rating: 1/10

Blue combat tricks are still bad, even at 1 mana. We’ve seen some very good ones in the last few years, but they’ve all let us draw a card, giving us an easy two-for-one play. This doesn’t do that and doesn’t even guarantee that it’ll be effective in combat, so I’d say just leave this in the sideboard.

River Herald Scout

Rating: 4/10

Explore is a good ability, and getting an enters the battlefield trigger like this is very good. This is no Merfolk Branchwalker, as a 2/1 is a much more valuable creature than a 1/2, but it’s still a solid common that I’d be very happy to play.

Sage of Days

Rating: 4/10

The fact that this card lets you put your three cards into the graveyard is what makes it good. Effectively surveil 3 is perfect for a graveyard-centric set, and when attached to a decently sized creature, it’s definitely worth playing.

Self-Reflection

Rating: 2/10

I have no idea what went so wrong with this card’s design. Six mana is obscenely expensive for a spell that might not even have a valid target. The only redeeming quality is the cheaper flashback option, meaning I’d probably only look to run this in a deck that was milling itself for value.

Shipwreck Sentry

Rating: 3/10

I’m a big fan of these sorts of defensive creatures, letting you stop aggressive decks from hitting you early while not being completely useless later on. It’s not a premium common by any means, but it’ll be useful in some decks.

Sinuous Benthisaur

Rating: 5/10

It’s a Mulldrifter! Yeah, not quite. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that a 4/4 vanilla creature for 6 mana is wildly unplayable. You absolutely need a good number of caves in your deck for this to work, ideally at least five or six. Six caves in your deck gives you a 70% chance of seeing at least two by the time you cast this, and that’s not taking into account other draw spells or self-mill. It’s definitely something you need to work towards, but assuming that the format is slow enough to allow you to do it, you definitely get paid off for it.

Song of Stupefaction

Rating: 4/10

This is a fine removal spell. The permanent count in this set is so high that even a deck not built around descend will have mostly permanent cards in their graveyard, making this close enough to other decend cards we’ve had recently like Fear of Death.

Spyglass Siren

Rating: 5/10

Is this the blue Thraben Inspector? It looks pretty close to me. Never underestimate a 1-drop in Limited these days, especially one that gives you a free bit of value on entering.

Staunch Crewmate

Rating: 6/10

You need your deck to have a large concentration on pirates and artifacts for this to work, but that’s not too difficult to do, especially in the blue/red archetype. Unlike other similar cards, like a Commune with Nature, missing on it isn’t the end of the world since you’ve already gotten a creature for your mana, and the trigger was just the bonus.

Subterranean Schooner

Rating: 5/10

This is a little disappointing for a rare. I honestly thought it was an uncommon when I first read it. A 3/4 vehicle with a simple crew 1 is fine, though we’ve seen plenty of similarly sized vehicles recently that don’t quite cut it. Getting to explore when it attacks is a big enough upside to make me think this ought to be playable, but it gets outclassed relatively quickly and has no evasion, meaning you’ll only really get a couple of explores out of it before you’re forced to stop.

The Enigma Jewel / Locus of Enlightenment

Rating: 5/10

I’m sure you can see that an artifact that doesn’t do anything on the board isn’t going to be particularly desirable. However, specifically in a crafting deck, I think this looks pretty good. It’s, after all, very close to a Sol Ring for that deck. We don’t have quite as many activated abilities as we did when Omen Hawker was a great card in March of the Machine, but I assume there’s still enough to make this a useful card.

The Everflowing Well / The Myriad Pools

Rating: 7/10

You don’t need to try too hard to sell me on a Divination with multiple upsides. The mill is highly beneficial and it’s easy to transform into a very good land. The ability is weird and perhaps hard to make sense of, but perhaps the most useful way to use it is by casting a creature to turn one of your lands into a copy of that creature for a turn. Naturally, your land won’t be summoning sick, so you’ll get to attack right away. I love this, and I really hope I get to pick it early and often.

Tishana’s Tidebinder

Rating: 5/10

There might be a few activated abilities in this set, but this feels much more like a plant for Constructed play than for Limited. A 3/2 with flash for 3 mana is fine. Sure, sometimes you’ll get to snipe a powerful ability, particularly a craft ability since your opponent will lose the cards they exile to its cost. But in general, I don’t see it happening too often.

Unlucky Drop

Rating: 3/10

I used to like these sorts of cards, but they seem to be getting worse and worse. There are probably better ways of dealing with creatures, but the slower this format is, the better this becomes.

Waterlogged Hulk / Watertight Gondola

Rating: 5/10

I’m not sure that a crafting deck is too interested in this, but the Dimir () self-mill deck certainly should be. You can start by milling yourself for a few cards, then it crafts into quite a powerful vehicle once you’ve hit descend 8. Not affecting the board is a bad thing, but at least this is a cheap enough artifact that it shouldn’t matter too much.

Waterwind Scout

Rating: 5/10

Gotta love a Wind Drake with upside. It’s as simple as that. This ought to be a highly desirable blue common which enables a bunch of archetypes in the format.

Waylaying Pirates

Rating: 3/10

Frost Lynx is one hell of a card, but making its ability conditional isn’t a recipe for success. This card is still just playable, but not something I’m excited to be putting in my deck.

Zoetic Glyph

Rating: 4/10

Just like Mightstone's Animation, this is probably a very solid package. You have the downsides of not getting your card right away and there not being a slew of Powerstone tokens for you to enchant, but the upside of being a cheaper, better creature and letting you cast a card for free likely make up for most of that.

Black

Abyssal Gorestalker

Rating: 5/10

Barter in Blood is a very powerful spell, though it requires some setup to work. The main issue with this is the delta between the worst it can be and the best it can be. The best-case scenario is you sacrifice a couple of throwaway creatures and kill your opponent’s bomb rare. The worst-case scenario is that casting it loses you the game because your opponent is the one with throwaway creatures. More often than not, that worst case scenario is too likely to want to play this, though in the right deck with a bunch of cheap tokens lying around, it might be one of your best plays.

Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal / Temple of the Dead

Rating: 10/10

Okay, now this feels like a god card. Aclazotz is just plain broken. As a 4/4 lifelinking flier, it dominates all but the direst of board states. Your opponent simply can’t legitimately race it and has to kill it on site. If they let it attack, they lose cards and fall even further behind. Better yet, if they kill it, it just becomes a land that’s relatively easy to flip back into Aclazotz. This is a very unreasonable card to play against and likely one of the best in the whole set.

Acolyte of Aclazotz

Rating: 4/10

Tapping to use its ability is a bit of a pain thanks to summoning sickness and only being able to use it once each turn cycle, but having no other costs is really handy. It’s still a free sacrifice outlet which does something relevant, as well as being a good blocker, so I’d reckon this sees a good amount of play in the format.

Another Chance

Rating: 5/10

Soul Salvage is a great way to give black access to some good card draw, especially in a set with so much self-mill. The fact that this enables itself is really nice, and I predict this being a premium black common that you’ll actively want in most of your decks.

Bitter Triumph

Rating: 8/10

The cost of 3 life or discarding a card may sound like a lot, but it’s absolutely worth it to be able to outright kill any creature for just 2 mana. Infernal Grasp was easily one of the best black cards in Midnight Hunt, and this should be just the same. Discarding a card might even be a bonus as you can discard a spare land to enable descend.

Bloodletter of Aclazotz

Rating: 6/10

Doubling all of your damage is a pretty cool ability, but not one that’s a particularly high priority. It’s a good size for a creature too, but I’m mainly scared of that triple black casting cost. It’s something I’m very happy to pay for a high value creature, but I have a feeling this falls a little short of that. It’s definitely a solid card and quite annoying to see, but it’s not a slam dunk pick by any means.

Bloodthorn Flail

Rating: 1/10

Getting to equip for free is quite exciting, but only giving +2/+1 is pretty mediocre. It’s not a bad bonus, it’s just that both equip costs feel too costly for what you’re getting out of it. Discarding can let you hit descend, so it’s not all doom and gloom, but I’m still not sold on it.

Bringer of the Last Gift

Rating: 4/10

Living Death on a stick is a really cool design. I have a friend who plays a lot of Commander, and Living Death is his favorite spell to cast. It’s even a great effect in Limited. Sadly, it’s going to be held back by that pesky casting cost. Eight mana is far too much for the majority of Limited decks to get to. If you’re ramping, say in a green/black deck, this might actually be good enough, but most of the time you shouldn’t even try to play this.

Broodrage Mycoid

Rating: 4/10

Excellent common. A 4/3 for 4 mana is a solid rate of stats, and it gives you a nice little bonus for doing the thing that black likes to do in this set.

Canonized in Blood

Rating: 5/10

This is an interesting build-around card that I’m having a hard time figuring out. On the one hand, getting a +1/+1 counter every turn is a pretty strong ability, but on the other, it doesn’t affect the board by itself and needs to be constantly enabled. At least it has a nice buyout clause for when you’re less likely to trigger it. I’m not entirely sold on it just yet, but it has lots of potential and I’d like to try it out.

Chupacabra Echo

Rating: 8/10

Ravenous Chupacabra is among the strongest Limited effects in the game. You need to put a little bit of work into enabling it, but once you do, it’s one of the best cards in the set. It even gets around pesky abilities like indestructible, and it trades itself up for better creatures, which means it might be even better than the original chupacabra in some ways.

Corpses of the Lost

Rating: 9/10

Right off the bat, a 3/2 haste for 3 mana is a pretty good deal. Naturally, the last ability is where this really starts getting out of hand. Paying just 1 life to return it to your hand to replay it later is fantastic. All you need to do is descend, which most decks in this format should be able to accomplish often enough. Even if you aren’t in one of black’s descend archetypes, you can still trigger it by sacrificing something or trading off in combat. This looks like an excellent card that doesn’t even need to be built around in order to be really powerful.

Dead Weight

Rating: 7/10

Easy contender for best common in the set. Dead Weight is a phenomenal removal spell that unlike its instant and sorcery cousins enables descend as well as kills opponents’ early plays. It’s flexible and powerful and works incredibly well in the set.

Deathcap Marionette

Rating: 5/10

I love cheap deathtouch creatures in Limited. Milling two cards when it enters is also a great upside which makes this a card I actively want in every black deck that has any kind of descend cards in it.

Deep Goblin Skulltaker

Rating: 4/10

A 2/2 menace for 3 is pretty below par, but it shouldn’t be that difficult to enable it a couple of times in the right deck and make it big enough to be a real threat. Assuming you can do that, I can think of far worse creatures to fill your curve with.

Deep-Cavern Bat

Rating: 7/10

Mesmeric Fiend, Tidehollow Sculler, and the like have been incredibly impressive cards in the past. This latest iteration looks no worse. With no restrictions on which spell you can take away from your opponent and even the upsides of flying and lifelink, this will be a really annoying card for them to deal with. Often they’ll have to spend a premium removal spell on it just to get their good card back.

Defossilize

Rating: 3/10

Five mana reanimation spells are all too common in modern Limited sets, and they almost never land. This one does look like it might have a home. Double explore is a very real bonus, and with so much self-mill and a couple of big creatures that discard themselves, you might be able to find a home for it.

Echo of Dusk

Rating: 4/10

While it’s unlikely for you to have descend 4 active early in a game, the fact that this is a fine 2-drop that becomes a 3/3 lifelinker in the mid-late gate is pretty fantastic. Lifelink creatures are especially good at swinging damage races in your favor, and when they appear this cheaply, they’re worth paying attention to.

Fanatical Offering

Rating: 5/10

This is very reminiscent of Deadly Dispute, but isn’t quite as broken. Still, the fact that you can sacrifice an artifact to this is great, as well as the fact that it gives you a disposable artifact back for other effects. Sacrifice decks often love this kind of effect, and this is a very good version of it.

Fungal Fortitude

Rating: 2/10

It’s cool to let your Undying Evil effect help your creature trade up in combat before dying, but this is still a very situational card that’s just terrible in many matchups.

Gargantuan Leech

Rating: 4/10

If you’re actively milling yourself and have enough caves in your deck, this is probably fine. Getting it to about 5 mana is the sweet spot, and any less than that is just gravy. Assuming you can reliably do that, you should definitely play this.

Grasping Shadows / Shadows’ Lair

Rating: 1/10

This card has the potential to draw you quite a few cards, but it takes a while to get to that point. Until then, paying 4 mana and then only getting lifelink and deathtouch on some combats sounds like too much effort. The effect is certainly good for you, but it costs so much mana that I don’t think it’s worth doing.

Greedy Freebooter

Rating: 3/10

I’m trying my best to look at 1-drops differently, but this one looks too weak to me. It’s clearly designed to be sacrifice fodder, but scry 1 plus a Treasure isn’t the kind of upside I’m looking for.

Join the Dead

Rating: 6/10

-5/-5 should be enough to kill most creatures in this set, so you don’t even need to get close to descend 4 for this to be a great removal spell. The fact that it can kill anything for just 3 mana a little later in the game is incredible.

Malicious Eclipse

Rating: 3/10

Infest effects tend to be incredible sideboard cards but a little temperamental outside of that. The fact that this exiles is relevant for the set, as it won’t enable descend, but that’s not enough to make this more than just a good control card that other decks can utilize from their sideboards.

Mephitic Draught

Rating: 5/10

I love to see this. A functional reprint of Ichor Wellspring is just begging to be sacrificed for value. Sure, you lose a bit of life, but that’s nowhere near enough to be keeping me from picking up as many of these as I can get my hands on.

Preacher of the Schism

Rating: 9/10

A 2/4 deathtouch creature is so hard to block profitably, making this really easy to attack with. Then, you get to either create a 1/1 lifelink token when you’re behind or draw a card when you’re ahead? Where’s the downside here? This is just incredible at all points in the game, and the very least it’ll do is trade off with a big creature.

Primordial Gnawer

Rating: 2/10

As broken as discover is, I still don’t want to be paying 5 mana for a 5/2. I get that the point of it is to trade off, but having it trade off for a 2 or 3 mana creature still doesn’t look worth it.

Queen’s Bay Paladin

Rating: 8/10

You obviously need some vampires for this to actually do anything, and there aren’t all that many to choose from. Still, assuming you can pick up a few of them, this looks like an extremely powerful bomb. It’ll cost you some life, but that’s worth it to put two creatures onto the board right away and then get more value when you attack. A lot of the vampires in the set can gain you life to help offset this, but I’m happy no matter what. Just be sure to build around it a little.

Rampaging Spiketail

Rating: 4/10

This triggered ability should not be underestimated. Rage-Scarred Berserker did so much work in Theros Beyond Death. Having this as the swampcycler seems pretty handy, regardless of whether you need to get the land or play it as a big dumb threat.

Ray of Ruin

Rating: 4/10

We’ve already gone past a bunch of high-quality removal spells in black, and this one doesn’t look like it quite cuts it. Black decks will probably be happy with one copy, but I doubt you’d ever be happy with the second one. I’m curious to see if I ever choose to exile a cave with this. It might actually be correct every now and again.

Screaming Phantom

Rating: 4/10

Gotta love a Wind Drake with upside. I feel like I say that a lot. Self-mill is very relevant in this set, so this seems like a great way to be enabling descend.

Skullcap Snail

Rating: 4/10

Can’t go wrong with a cheap bit of card advantage. While not quite as good as Virus Beetle was, exiling the opponent’s card is a nice touch to avoid triggering descend cards.

Soulcoil Viper

Rating: 3/10

I’m not getting this one. It’s slow, has bad stats and doesn’t really accomplish much. Since you have to sacrifice this, you’re not really reanimating something. It’s more like you’re upgrading this creature. That upgrade had better be worth it before you consider playing this.

Souls of the Lost

Rating: 7/10

If you’re milling yourself, this is really easy to turn into a ginormous threat. It’d be fine in most black decks, but given that you have to sacrifice a permanent or discard a card to cast it, I want to be sure that what I'm getting is big enough to warrant that cost. Still, if you discard an extra land and end up with a 9/10 or something for 2 mana, that’s probably really good.

Stalactite Stalker

Rating: 7/10

It won’t take too long to make this a very potent threat, and given that you only paid 1 mana for it, that sounds like a great deal to me. You can even cash it in for a sweet removal spell at some point. Ultimately, this requires very little work to turn into a powerful card and is even a solid one without that work.

Starving Revenant

Rating: 9/10

While this is dangerous to do on a low life total, it’s still just a 4/4 Mulldrifter for 4 mana with some extra steps. In a deck that can reach the eight permanents needed for descend, this even turns into a pseudo-Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. The whole package is something I’d definitely play in any black deck, but I’d would be even more happy to see if I could enable its descend ability.

Stinging Cave Crawler

Rating: 7/10

The ability to draw a card whenever you attack is just filthy. Audacious Thief ended up being a premium common back in M20, and this creature is even harder to block. Even if they block and trade, you’ve gotten a free card out of the deal. You do need to build around it to some extent, but the payoff is definitely there.

Synapse Necromage

Rating: 5/10

This is no Deathbloom Thallid, but it’s close enough. A 3/1 isn’t a great set of stats, but you can still trade this off for a 2 or 3 mana creature and get some value. We’ve seen a lot of tokens recently that can’t block, and they usually play out a little better than expected, even though these Fungus tokens aren’t as common in this set as the Rats were in Wilds of Eldraine.

Tarrian’s Journal / The Tomb of Aclazotz

Rating: 6/10

This is a card that provides a steady stream of extra cards but doesn’t affect the board in any way. Some decks are definitely interested in that, but there’s only so many that you can afford to run in a deck. The real payoff with this is being able to transform it, as the land side allows you access to all of your dead creatures, effectively drawing you a bunch of usable cards.

Terror Tide

Rating: 7/10

This shouldn’t be too difficult to enable. Once it hits three or four permanents in the graveyard, it’s a very powerful sweeper as well as being cheap enough for you to make a follow-up play. Just knowing that this is a card in the set should make you think differently about how you play. Make sure you don’t overextend too much into any black deck, because getting blown out by this is going to hurt.

Tithing Blade / Consuming Sepulcher

Rating: 1/10

Not only are Cruel Edicts generally bad in Limited, but this isn’t even something you want to craft into its other side. This could be a nice sideboard card against a deck where edicts aren’t that bad (i.e. they don’t have a lot of tokens or disposable creatures), but other than that it’s useless.

Visage of Dread / Dread Osseosaur

Rating: 6/10

I’m not used to my Thoughtseizes getting to turn into sizable creatures in the late game, but I guess that’s what we’ve got here. Taking an artifact or creature card means it hurts the majority of cards in the set, so you shouldn’t miss very often. Crafting with creatures seems like a fairly easy thing to do, but this can also just be used for other crafts or whatever else you might need it for.

Vito’s Inquisitor

Rating: 2/10

Getting a +1/+1 counter when you sacrifice something is pretty good, but 4 is a lot of mana to invest into a creature that’s terrible until you do that.

Red

Abrade

Rating: 7/10

Abrade is back! It might be even better in this set than it ever has been before. There are so many artifacts available to remove, making this probably one of the most versatile removal spells in the set.

Ancestors’ Aid

Rating: 1/10

We’ve seen this exact spell before, but in a set where combat was largely irrelevant, so it didn’t have any opportunity to shine. I’m not sure if this format will be different, but I’m not a fan of these kinds of tricks in the first place. It gets a low rating, but we’ll see how it plays out.

Belligerent Yearling

Rating: 6/10

A 3/2 with trample for just 2 mana is a ridiculous rate on an uncommon creature. Particularly with no downsides. This is a welcome curve-filler for literally any red deck based on its raw stats, but dinosaur decks can make extra use of its trigger, sometimes allowing it to attack profitably into 5/5s and the like.

Bonehoard Dracosaur

Rating: 10/10

My first instinct when looking at this card is to criticize the fact that it doesn’t have haste and doesn’t do anything right away. You need to wait a whole turn before it does anything, giving your opponent a lot of time to find an answer and just trade it off. While all that is certainly true, a 5/5 flier with first strike that draws you two extra cards every turn and even gives you free tokens is just plain broken. Sure, it “dies to Doom Blade,” but when it doesn’t it will win you the game very easily.

Brass’s Tunnel-Grinder / Tecutlan, the Searing Rift

Rating: 7/10

Once again, we have an artifact that doesn’t affect the board, but instead provides long term card advantage. You don’t have to discard anything to its first trigger, but since you’ll want to descend, you should probably at least pitch a land and draw two cards. If you get to transform it, it becomes obscenely good, effectively giving one permanent spell cascade every turn, churning through your deck until you pull out your best cards. I hope this format is slow enough to allow this to do its work, and if that’s the case it should be a fantastic card.

Brazen Blademaster

Rating: 3/10

You can’t just put this in any deck, but if you have a deck with a high concentration of artifacts, attacking as a 4/4 is pretty decent. I just don’t know how often decks like that are going to want an aggressive creature like this.

Breeches, Eager Pillager

Rating: 9/10

Seriously? Where’s the downside? Aren’t cards supposed to have those? I guess not. You’ll always play a 3/3 first strike for 3, let alone one that draws you a card when it attacks, stops something from blocking, or fronts you some mana. You don’t even need pirates in your deck because Breeches does all of this by itself! Easy bomb rare, which is especially good for a card that’s this cheap to play.

Burning Sun Cavalry

Rating: 4/10

There are so many dinosaurs in this set that this should be fairly easy to pull off. This looks like the perfect aggressive 2-drop for a dinosaur deck, though it’s not likely to see much play elsewhere.

Calamitous Cave-In

Rating: 6/10

Is that you, Gate Ablaze? This is certainly not going to be anywhere near as powerful as that was, but assuming you get enough caves, this should be a powerful sweeper nonetheless. The sweet spot is doing about 3 damage, so you really want at least six or seven caves to make it work. I don’t know how likely that is yet, but I’m hoping it’s possible.

Child of the Volcano

Rating: 4/10

It should be relatively easy to descend in a turn, even without paying mana. Assuming you can do so, play this and it immediately becomes a 4/4. Getting bigger from there is definitely nice, and it will soon rival some of the bigger dinosaurs in the set.

Curator of Sun’s Creation

Rating: 2/10

Discover is already a really broken mechanic that doesn’t need any help. Let alone from a card that’s just a Hill Giant when you’re not discovering. I also don’t think you’re going to discover anywhere near often enough to want this kind of ability.

Daring Discovery

Rating: 3/10

I think I’d be happy to play this in an aggressive deck. I can top my curve by playing this, attacking for a ton of damage and getting a free spell out of the deal. It doesn’t feel like you’re actually discovering for free though, rather it’s very much built into the cost of the spell. Still, this is close to a Falter, and those can be pretty nasty when timed correctly.

Diamond Pick-Axe

Rating: 4/10

Goldvein Pick was an extremely good card in Kaldheim, and while this new version is significantly different, it still has some good things going for it. Firstly, making a Treasure on attacking rather than combat damage means you get them no matter how your opponent blocks. Also, with artifacts mattering so much in this set, getting these for free is something that I’m sure a lot of red decks can utilize in some way.

Dinotomaton

Rating: 4/10

This is a really nice, aggressive card which looks like it can fit into a few different decks. Not just any aggro deck, but naturally artifact decks and dinosaur typal decks will be very interested in this.

Dire Flail / Dire Blunderbuss

Rating: 8/10

Taking a Bonesplitter and giving it an upside that lets you kill your opponent’s creatures at will is just ridiculous. You’d already be very happy with Bonesplitter on its own, but if you get to transform this, you’ll probably just win the game. You can equip it up really cheaply and start sacrificing Treasures or Maps to remove pesky blockers. This looks good enough to take over a game if it’s allowed to do so.

Dowsing Device / Geode Grotto

Rating: 1/10

Unless you’re playing artifact creatures and giving them haste, this entire card is so weak and hard to trigger that I don’t think it’ll even do anything relevant. The land you transform it into isn’t even that good. It costs 3 mana plus itself to give a buff to a creature, which isn’t the most enticing. The haste won’t even matter since so much of your mana is spent activating the ability in the first place. I’d just stay well clear of this and move on.

Dreadmaw’s Ire

Rating: 4/10

While I’m not a big fan of combat tricks in general, this is cheap, does everything you want in a combat trick, and even tacks on some extra artifact hate as a nice little bonus. It won’t work on defense, but who am I kidding? You’re not blocking with your big dinosaurs, are you?

Enterprising Scallywag

Rating: 5/10

Descending is really easy to do. Literally any permanent needs to hit the graveyard, so while discarding and milling are the easy options, even trading your creature off in combat will do it. Given that, this should be pretty easy to trigger in the early turns of the game, netting you a couple of free Treasures for your troubles. Also, I have to say… awesome name!

Etali’s Favor

Rating: 5/10

I usually hate auras, but this one gives you a great amount of value if you can make sure it resolves. Three mana for a random 2- or 3-drop plus a +1/+1 and trample boost to another creature is a really nice deal, especially if you play it on curve. This has a lot of potential to make really silly plays, and you can even build your deck in such a way that it won’t backfire on you.

Geological Appraiser

Rating: 7/10

Oh, hello there Bloodbraid Elf. As someone who has cast a ton of Bloodbraid Elves, let me tell you that this card is extremely powerful. Sure, I’m exaggerating a tiny bit since haste is a big part of what makes Bloodbraid so good, but this is still a busted card and one of the easiest two-for-ones you’ll ever see.

Goblin Tomb Raider

Rating: 2/10

Lara Croft has seen better days. One mana for a 2/2 haste is great, but only in the early turns of the game, which this isn’t going to be. Especially since it can never be that on turn 1.

Goldfury Strider

Rating: 4/10

I like that you can use this ability to buff smaller creatures and have them attack through bigger blockers. There should be quite a lot of random artifacts sitting around doing nothing, and this is quite a good way to use them. That said, this is still a 5-drop, which you usually don’t need very many of, and this ability isn’t exciting enough to make the cut over some other 5-drops.

Hit the Mother Lode

Rating: 1/10

Yeah, this card is really cool, and I’m sure it's hilarious to play in Commander. But sadly, it’s just severely lacking for Limited play. If you’re spending 7 mana on a card, it needs to be pretty much winning you the game. Not giving you a different spell and some Treasure tokens. Maybe if you had a deck that would genuinely love to have about 6-8 Treasures entering the battlefield, then this could be worth it, but that’s the only reason I’d play this.

Hotfoot Gnome

Rating: 3/10

This card’s raw stats aren’t too bad, but not good enough for me to be that interested. Giving your other creatures haste can be pretty annoying, especially as you move up the mana curve. This combination is certainly playable, but not something I’d want to prioritize.

Idol of the Deep King / Sovereign’s Macuahuitl

Rating: 4/10

Three mana for a Shock and a little bit of upside is perfectly fine. It’s a bit on the expensive side, but with all the cards in this set that care about artifacts in some way, this is bound to come in handy.

Inti, Seneschal of the Sun

Rating: 8/10

This is so cheap for what it’s doing. You’re essentially rummaging with every attack while also buffing your attacking creatures, and this is only a 2-drop? What? It even enables descend by discarding cards. What a great card.

Magmatic Galleon

Rating: 9/10

Here, we have basically a vehicle Flametongue Kavu. It’s really easy to crew and attack with plus it even gives you Treasure when you kill anything smaller than a 5/5. It’s really just an excellent card all round and doesn’t even require any work. Just play it, and it’ll be good.

Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might / Temple of Power

Rating: 6/10

While this god looks hilarious to build a Commander deck around, it doesn’t have a lot going for it in Limited. Dealing noncombat damage to an opponent isn’t something that you can regularly do, which means it rarely modifies anything and is really hard to transform back. It leaves you with basically a 4/4 trampler for 4 mana that leaves behind a land when it dies. That’s still really good, just nowhere close to bomb rare levels.

Panicked Altisaur

Rating: 4/10

This creature looks awesome. Nice and defensive, you can leave it back as a blocker that your opponent can’t really attack into, then hit them for 2 damage regardless. Onakke Javelineer played out great in March of the Machine, and I expect this to be about as good, even without battles that need pressuring.

Plundering Pirate

Rating: 4/10

Nice and simple. A 3/2 for 3 is perfectly fine, and getting a Treasure out of it lets you make bigger plays ahead of time while also fixing your mana. Can’t go too wrong with this. Also makes an artifact for the blue/red deck to care about.

Poetic Ingenuity

Rating: 7/10

Creating a creature token whenever you “do the thing” is among the best build-around payoffs you can get. This is a great way for slower artifact-based decks to accrue a bunch of card advantage and board presence. Ultimately, getting free creatures each turn adds up over time and should overwhelm your opponent in just a few turns.

Rampaging Ceratops

Rating: 3/10

“Super” menace is a sweet ability, and this is hard to block, but that’s really all it can do. 5-drops are very easy to pick up, and this one doesn’t look so exciting that I’d often want it.

Rumbling Rockslide

Rating: 6/10

Four mana for at least 4 damage kills most creatures in the set. It’s simple and efficient while scaling up as the game goes on, just what you want out of a removal spell.

Saheeli’s Lattice

Rating: 5/10

Tormenting Voice is already a solid card that you sometimes play. Especially in decks that care about instants and sorceries. The same is true here, except that Saheeli's Lattice does so much more. It enables artifact and descend strategies and can then turn itself into a large vanilla creature later in the game. I assume this is highly desirable, particularly in the artifact decks that just want cheap artifacts that do things.

Scytheclaw Raptor

Rating: 5/10

The 4-damage ability isn’t going to come up too often, but you mainly want to play this for its size. A 4/3 for 3 is really solid, plus being a dinosaur is very relevant in the set.

Seismic Monstrosaur

Rating: 5/10

Unlike the other landcyclers, this actually looks like a creature I’d be pretty happy to play, even if it didn’t cycle. It’s just huge and really efficient for a 6-drop. Plus, the ability to cash in lands for extra cards is one we’ve seen a lot and always plays well.

Sunfire Torch

Rating: 5/10

What a cool design for what essentially boils down to being a Shock that works with descend. Needing to attack to trigger it might end up being kind of restrictive, but it still does a fair bit of work and will be annoying to play against for sure.

Sunshot Militia

Rating: 2/10

This is definitely the kind of card I was expecting to see for the red/white deck to be able to close out a game, but sorcery speed really sucks. If you’ve built the deck well, I could see this being a one-of to close out games, but beyond that I don’t like it much.

Tectonic Hazard

Rating: 1/10

I’m sure you’ll come across decks where this effect can be great, but it should be kept in the sideboard until then. It’s far too situational to use in a main deck.

Triumphant Chomp

Rating: 7/10

Another great name for a dinosaur card. Sorcery speed 2 damage to a creature is fine, if a little bit mediocre. But with enough dinosaurs in your deck, this quickly can become a 1-mana removal spell that kills most creatures. This rating is assuming that you have some big dinosaurs for this to see, but it’s still a reasonable inclusion to kill cheap creatures if you don’t have those.

Trumpeting Carnosaur

Rating: 10/10

Is this supposed to be a 9 or a 10? First world problems, I guess. This card is just the nuts. Usually, your 6-mana bombs are relatively useless when facing down annoying aggro decks, but this one turns itself into an Open Fire if you really need it. Casting it sounds much better though, where the least it can do is draw you a spell of some kind and the best it can do is cast a 5-drop for free. You can’t go wrong with any part of this card, and it works in basically any deck.

Volatile Wanderglyph

Rating: 4/10

This is just a solid 2-drop for most decks, but the red/white deck in particular should love to see it. Anything to get a little bit of extra value from tapping your permanents should be worth it.

Zoyowa’s Justice

Rating: 0/10

I’m sure this might have some funny casual applications, but it looks horrendous for Limited. It’s terrible at dealing with an opponent’s creature since they get to cast a replacement spell for free. There’s even a reasonable chance that they recast the same creature you shuffled away! That would be unbelievably disastrous. It’s not even good to cast on your own creatures. This is just awful; you should never play it.

Green

Armored Kincaller

Rating: 5/10

This looks like a fantastic common for dinosaurs. Three mana for a 3/3 and 3 life the vast majority of the time is just great. Above all else, it helps you to win damage races, which is a vital skill for any aggro deck.

Basking Capybara

Rating: 4/10

Welcome to Magic capybaras! These things are so adorable, I love them. The card isn’t too bad, though you’ll want to be enabling it in a descend deck, because no deck is going to care about a 1/3 for 2.

Bedrock Tortoise

Rating: 7/10

I’m not sure what this card is doing in this set. It doesn’t seem to have any synergies. But it’s still just a 6/6 for 4 mana that gives hexproof to everything on your turn. That’s just awesome, and I’d happily play it in any green deck.

Cavern Stomper

Rating: 2/10

In a set with quite a lot of big dumb creatures, this one doesn’t look particularly good. A 7/7 that can just get chump blocked is asking for trouble. Yeah, you can activate its ability and make it harder to block, but that costs a lot of mana and will often mean you can’t play another relevant spell in the turn.

Cenote Scout

Rating: 6/10

Say it with me again. Don’t underestimate 1-drops in Limited. This is simply a great one, being either a 2/2 for 1 mana or a 1/1 that drew you a land. Both options are great.

Coati Scavenger

Rating: 7/10

Descend 4 shouldn’t be that difficult to enable and when your reward is a buffed Eternal Witness, it’s absolutely worth trying to do.

Colossadactyl

Rating: 6/10

This is probably as close to a vanilla creature as we’re likely to get these days. It’s an excellent rate for the mana you spend. Great on offense, great on defense, just great all around.

Cosmium Confluence

Rating: 8/10

You do of course need some caves for this to be reasonable, but being able to ramp you, make a few creatures for you or make one large creature is a really nice set of abilities to have. I think the most common options will be to grab a cave and turn another into a 6/6 or just go and turn one cave into a 9/9. Just that last mode alone gives this card a high rating since it basically counts as being a 6-mana (5 mana plus the land you animate) 9/9 with haste and the upside of having other options.

Disturbed Slumber

Rating: 1/10

This design is really cool, evoking the classic trope seen in these kinds of adventure movies where a wall is actually the body of a large creature. Still, 2 mana to create a temporary 4/4 isn’t all that good. It’s sort of removal, but only situationally.

Earthshaker Dreadmaw

Rating: 7/10

As far as big dinosaurs go, this one is right up there. If you have built a dinosaur deck, it’s not hard to imagine having a couple of them in play by the time you get to 6 mana. At that point, this is just a huge Mulldrifter and basically the best card you could play at that point. It’s also just a Colossal Dreadmaw, which certain non-dinosaur decks will sometimes also want.

Explorer’s Cache

Rating: 6/10

This looks kind of weird, but it basically lets you put a +1/+1 counter on each of your creatures, but with the caveat of only two at once. Given that green/white cares about making creatures bigger, this is a pretty cheap and efficient way of enabling that.

Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant

Rating: 2/10

Yeah, I read this ability when it was first spoiled and fell in love. We’ll be casting this in Commander a fair bit, but it does next to nothing in Limited. Eight mana is already well beyond the threshold of castable, but worse yet is that if you do get to play it, it’s just a massive creature and that’s it. You’ll have most likely cast all your creatures before getting to that point, so the triggered ability won’t do anything. Sure, a 12/12 with trample is amazing, but picture all those games where you draw this and never reach 8 mana. It’ll probably lose you more games than you realize.

Glimpse the Core

Rating: 5/10

Rampant Growth is back! I mean… kind of. It’s close enough. Sure, you’re not fixing your colors with it, but you’re still accelerating on turn 2 and that’s just great, especially if you want to cast big dinosaurs. Drawing it late is bad, but that’s where the second mode comes in. You can get back one of the Hidden caves and then sac it on the following turn to discover 4, which is a much better failsafe than what Rampant Growth ever had.

Glowcap Lantern

Rating: 4/10

The only thing I don’t like about this card is the equip cost. Two might sound cheap, but it can be very annoying in the earlier turns. What you get for it is pretty nice though, since exploring on an attack will perhaps allow you to attack into bigger creatures or just simply give you card advantage. Even better because you get to see your top card before attacking so you know if it’ll hit or not. This is quite nice, and the blue/green explore deck will especially want it.

Growing Rites of Itlimoc / Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun

Rating: 1/10

Growing Rites has seen a good amount of Commander play and is a really cool throwback to Gaea's Cradle, but it’s just terrible in Limited. Three mana to Impulse for a creature is awful and not something I’d even pay 1 mana for. Then, it requires four creatures to transform into the cradle, which is really not the easiest thing to do. There are plenty of times when you play this, miss, and never get to transform it, and that’s something I’d really like to avoid.

Huatli’s Final Strike

Rating: 6/10

Yeah! Good riddance Vito! Anyway, this is just great removal for green. Instant speed for a bite and a little extra power to help you take down bigger creatures. What’s not to like?

Huatli, Poet of Unity / Roar of the Fifth People

Rating: 10/10

Let’s get this part out of the way first. Borderland Ranger/Civic Wayfinder would already be about a 6/10, so this has to be at least better than that. Not only do you get to fix your mana, but then you get to push yourself really far ahead by transforming Huatli into the saga. Getting a pair of 3/3 dinosaurs right away makes it well worth paying the 5 mana to transform it, and it just gets better from there. This just has to be one of the best cards in the set for everything it gives you.

Hulking Raptor

Rating: 7/10

Now this could be a way of ramping into something like Ghalta. Though it’s rare, so that seems unlikely. Thanks to ward 2, if you get this out early, your opponent won’t be able to do anything about it and you’ll just have a massive play on the following turn. There are lots of mana dorks in this set, so playing it on turn 3 seems very doable, at which point it accelerates you so much that you might just overwhelm your opponent before they know what’s happening. Oh, it’s also a huge creature that needs to be dealt with, just in case.

In the Presence of Ages

Rating: 4/10

While I’d normally hate playing a card like this, especially for 3 mana, dumping the cards you look at into the graveyard is a very big deal. Creatures and lands comprise about 80% of most Limited decks, making it a near certainty to hit at least one (hypergeometric distribution suggests you have a 99.9% chance). I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up being a premium green common.

Intrepid Paleontologist

Rating: 9/10

A 2-drop mana dork is already great, especially when it’s a 2/2 to get attacking with. The ability to “flashback” any dinosaur in your graveyard for 2 extra mana is an incredible and really unexpected upside. You even get to pay the 2 in advance and then cast the dinosaur on a later turn, which is especially useful with some of the bigger ones. This is among the best cards to play on turn 2, yet it also gives you a virtually unbeatable late game. It’s a good play at nearly every point in the game.

Ixalli’s Lorekeeper

Rating: 4/10

1-drop mana dorks are great in Limited. Restrictive ones like this are far less so, but dinosaur decks are still going to be happy to pick this up to accelerate into their powerful 4+ mana plays.

Jade Seedstones / Jadeheart Attendant

Rating: 5/10

This is going to feel most at home in a green/white deck where you’re more likely to have three creatures to buff. Though of course it can always just put all of the counters on one creature, so it’s probably good anywhere. It’s difficult to know where to place something that only adds to the board if you already have a board presence. I used to love these kinds of cards, but then Picnic Ruiner kept underperforming for me in Wilds of Eldraine, so I don’t know what to think anymore. I still think this is very playable and the buyout of crafting it into a 7/7 Honey Mammoth is very good too.

Jadelight Spelunker

Rating: 7/10

The X in this card’s mana cost makes it a powerful play at pretty much any point on your curve. It’s much better in the late game, where if you get to explore five or six times you can just churn through your deck to find the answer you need to win the game. In terms of stats, it’s only ever going to be as big as an Endless One, but the exploring you do will carry it a long way.

Kaslem’s Stonetree / Kaslem’s Strider

Rating: 1/10

Three mana to maybe get a land from your deck is really disappointing. Worse yet, crafting with a cave sounds really detrimental given that all the cave payoffs want them to stay in the graveyard or on the battlefield and all you get in return is a 5/5. I doubt this is any good, and I assume we can do better.

Malamet Battle Glyph

Rating: 5/10

This is basically just a Prey Upon with a nice upside. Given how cheap it is, I think the upside comes up fairly often, and this should be a very solid removal spell for green.

Malamet Brawler

Rating: 3/10

This isn’t among the better 2-drops in the set, but it’s a perfectly serviceable one that really helps when you’re being aggressive.

Malamet Scythe

Rating: 2/10

This could have been a really sweet combat trick, since it leaves a relevant permanent behind, but 4 to equip is so much mana that I don’t think this’ll end up being worth it.

Malamet Veteran

Rating: 3/10

5-drops are never particularly high priority. This one does tick a lot of the boxes I’d want from a 5, but it’ll be cut from decks quite often.

Mineshaft Spider

Rating: 4/10

We really have come a long way since the days of Giant Spider. This variation is fantastic. Milling yourself is great for descend and a 3/4 reach body is really annoying to get through.

Nurturing Bristleback

Rating: 4/10

We’ve learned our lesson by now that forestcycling for 2 mana isn’t quite as good as it once was. Here, I still think this card is good. It’s a fine play for 7 mana, which it looks like the dinosaur decks will be able to get to, but it also helps to fix your mana in the early turns if you really need it to.

Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth / Temple of Cultivation

Rating: 10/10

This looks like it’s the best god of the cycle by miles. The triggered ability feels like you’re playing dirty, getting to put creatures directly onto the battlefield and cheating on their casting costs. At a 6/5 trample for 5 mana, the game is automatically about Ojer Kaslem and how to stop it. It also has one of the easier conditions to satisfy for you to transform it back from being a land. This is just a stupidly powerful card, and you should never pass it.

Over the Edge

Rating: 2/10

As good as exploring is, I don’t really want to cast a sorcery that only explores twice. Given that this is artifact/enchantment removal, this’ll be a great sideboard card, and depending how the format shapes up, it might even make for a good main deck card.

Pathfinding Axejaw

Rating: 4/10

More often than not, this is just a 5/4 for 4 mana. That’s pretty good for a common and a nice curve-filler for any green deck.

Poison Dart Frog

Rating: 5/10

I’m not a fan of frogs, but come on, it’s so cute! There’s surely no chance it could kill you if you get into combat with it… right? As far as mana dorks go, one which can easily trade up when it’s not useful anymore is really high on my list of wants.

Pugnacious Hammerskull

Rating: 8/10

Three mana… for a 6/6? I’m reading that right, aren’t I? Getting a stun counter when it attacks is barely a downside, and in a dinosaur deck it almost never will be. You don’t even need to attack with it much, because it has no restrictions on when it can block. Just play it as a massive brick wall that your opponent will struggle to get through for a few turns.

River Herald Guide

Rating: 2/10

Exploring is great, but this is still a very vulnerable creature in terms of stats, so I doubt it’ll be that good. Tishana's Wayfinder was a fairly good card back in the day, but the extra toughness it had really helped to carry it.

Seeker of Sunlight

Rating: 3/10

Similarly, this card just looks weak. It could definitely be a good thing to sink mana into in the late game, but it’s hard to know how useful that’ll actually be.

Sentinel of the Nameless City

Rating: 8/10

Just one of these creatures can presumably make quite a few Map tokens before being dealt with. You get one right away, which potentially turns it into a 4/5 attacker on the following turn, letting you easily create another. It then just keeps spiraling out of control until your opponent finds a way to deal with it, except it keeps getting bigger and therefore harder to deal with.

Spelunking

Rating: 4/10

Three mana is a little expensive for what is ultimately just an Explore. Gaining 4 life is a nice touch if you have a cave, as is the ability to have them all enter untapped, but that isn’t enough to elevate it beyond being just a fine card.

Staggering Size

Rating: 4/10

+3/+3 and trample for just 2 mana is a pretty efficient combat trick. I quite like this one, especially remembering how powerful Run Amok has been.

Tendril of the Mycotyrant

Rating: 6/10

2-drops with late game relevance are always worth paying attention to, especially when said late game relevance is the ability to create 7/7s every turn. It takes a lot of mana, but this is basically unbeatable if a game drags on long enough to get to that stage. However, it doesn’t do a great deal until that point, which holds it back from getting a much higher rating.

The Skullspore Nexus

Rating: 8/10

Eight mana looks like a lot, but this is more than likely going to be about 4 or 5 to cast, at which point it looks awesome. Allowing your creatures to replace themselves with big tokens is very powerful. Imagine all your 4/4s creating 4/4 tokens when they die. Better yet, using the activated ability on a creature that’s about to die makes you a huge token to replace it. Your 3/2 is turned into a 6/2 and then creates a 6/6 when it dies, which you can then turn into a 12/6 with the Nexus. This isn’t The Great Henge, but it still has a profound impact on the board and is likely to secure you a win in most scenarios.

Thrashing Brontodon

Rating: 6/10

Thrashing Brontodon is a classic card by now and a really cool reprint to see. Particularly in a set like this with so many artifacts and enchantments to get rid of. Its base states make it an auto-include in virtually every deck, and dinosaur decks should prioritize it over most other cards.

Twists and Turns / Mycoid Maze

Rating: 7/10

I think this card looks excellent. Right off the bat, you get a scry 1 plus an explore for just 1 mana, making it really easy to slip into your mana curve at some point. From that point on, you might get a free scry or two, but even if you don’t, you barely invested anything into it to start. Once you transform it, you get an exceptional land reminiscent of Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin which will be able to find you all of your best creatures if given enough time.

Walk with the Ancestors

Rating: 1/10

Five mana is a lot to spend on this card. Getting a permanent card back is cool, especially in a set where everything is a permanent, but not knowing what you’re getting from the discover means you might have massively overpaid. Getting a 2-drop off of it sounds like a disaster and not one that I’m willing to take a spin on.

Multicolored

Abuelo, Ancestral Echo

Rating: 8/10

Have you ever had the misfortune of playing against Mistmeadow Witch? Abuelo does a pretty good impression of that. Let me set the stage for you. None of your removal spells work anymore. That’s the gist of it anyway. There are plenty of powerful permanents in this set with enters the battlefield triggers for you to flicker, but the best part is just leaving 3 mana open and flickering something in response to removal or after blocking. Abuelo itself has ward 2, meaning that even when your opponent sees that it needs to die, it’ll often cost them their whole turn just to do that.

Akawalli, the Seething Tower

Rating: 7/10

It looks like we really want to be enabling descend. Akawalli is an absolute beast of a card. Three mana for a 3/3 is already not too bad, but if you can enable descend 8, it’s a 7/7 trample that can’t be double blocked? That’s just incredible, no matter what flavor of deck you’re playing.

Amalia Benavides Aguirre

Rating: 3/10

This is a weird card to have in the set. I don’t see all that many ways of gaining life, so you won’t get to do the thing all that often. Getting to 20 power is laughable and might as well just be flavor text until you get to Commander. Amalia does look like a card that has potential, but it’s very poorly supported in the set from what I can tell.

Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon

Rating: 8/10

Anim Pakal looks like a really solid rare with a lot of potential upside. Imagine playing a 2-drop on 2, then this on 3, and attacking. You immediately get a +1/+1 counter and your first Gnome. Then on turn 4, Anim Pakal can attack, becoming a 3/4 and creating two more Gnomes. A lot of these Gnomes won’t necessarily survive the combat, but in many ways they don’t need to. As you keep creating more, they become harder for your opponent to control. Better yet, Anim Pakal never needs to attack in order to trigger, so you could leave it back and let the rest of your creatures do most of the work.

Bartolomé del Presidio

Rating: 7/10

In Magic, you rarely get given anything for free. The ability to freely sacrifice anything with no timing restrictions isn’t something we ever get these days. It’s what made Cartel Aristocrat a staple in Standard back in the day. This ability is extremely powerful, and with black/white caring about sacrificing permanents, this becomes an incredibly premium card for that deck.

Caparocti Sunborn

Rating: 7/10

With the red/white deck having so many artifacts lying around for you to tap, all you really need to do is to attack and get some free value. Given that this is a 4/4 for 4, that should also be fairly easy to do. Even if this trades off in the first attack, as long as you got your first discover trigger off it, you’re up on cards and tempo. If it doesn’t, you’re going to be getting really far ahead pretty quickly.

Captain Storm, Cosmium Raider

Rating: 7/10

We’ve seen the power of cards like Yotian Dissident recently, and while Captain Storm looks a fair bit worse than that, it can always buff itself. Starting out at a 2/2 means that it doesn’t take many triggers before Captain Storm is the biggest creature on most boards. There aren’t too many other pirates to put counters onto, but even finding one will help this immensely. The ability is extremely powerful and has no timing restrictions, so this should be an exceptional card for you to build around.

Deepfathom Echo

Rating: 6/10

Since this is already a 4/4, turning it into a copy of another creature you control isn’t going to matter very often. But a 4/4 for 4 mana that explores for free every turn is still really powerful, so we’ll go with that.

Gishath, Sun’s Avatar

Rating: 5/10

I’ve already said this a couple of times, but 8 mana is too much for most Limited decks to handle. Still, Gishath is by far the most popular card from the original Ixalan, and it’s easy to see why. The card is clearly very powerful if you cast it; it’s just a matter of getting to it. There’s enough ramp in green to assume that you could do this, and it’s a much better payoff for you than Ghalta is. I don’t know what the rating here should be, but I know I’ll at least try Gishath before dismissing it entirely.

Itzquinth, Firstborn of Gishath

Rating: 8/10

Now this is a signpost uncommon! Having one of your dinosaurs bite something when it enters is incredibly on theme and a really powerful effect to have. It’s essentially a dinosaur Flametongue Kavu with an extra step, but that’s really not hard to do in this color combination. Can you imagine playing this on curve? You played a 3-drop dinosaur, then on turn 4 you played this, killed your opponent’s 3-drop, and attacked with both? This is unbelievable. Dinosaurs are really shaping up to be a powerful archetype in the format, and this could well be the set’s mythic uncommon.

Kellan, Daring Traveler / Journey On

Rating: 7/10

Kellan is back. As the main character of the current story arc, we figured he would be. Most opponents will control artifacts in this set, so a single green to create two Maps is definitely worth it (though you’re unlikely to be able to do that on turn 1). The creature side lets you draw some extra cards every now and again, especially if you set it up with the Map tokens exploring for you. Overall, This Kellan is a nice little card advantage engine that’s never setting the world on fire but is definitely pulling its weight.

Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar

Rating: 7/10

Kutzil does some fine work here. Locking out your opponent’s instants on your turn is really nice, though shouldn’t come up all that often in this set. The main bit to be interested in lets you draw a card each combat as long as you connect with a “modified” creature. There are a lot of easy ways to pick up +1/+1 counters in this set, which should make this fairly easy to enable. Once you’ve gotten just one card out of it, you’ll feel like you got paid off.

Master’s Guide-Mural / Master’s Manufactory

Rating: 4/10

This is the white/blue signpost uncommon for the crafting deck. It certainly looks powerful when you transform it, but costing 7 mana to do so really holds it back. The front side only gives you a 4/4 token, which is a bad deal when you paid 5 mana to do it. Unlike the other signpost uncommons we’ve seen, this isn’t good enough to pull me into this deck, rather I’d prefer to have other cards pull me in this direction and then pick this up later.

Molten Collapse

Rating: 7/10

My playset of secret lair Dreadbores are looking so miserable right about now. This new removal spell is excellent. It’s cheap and efficient, and it kills anything. I don’t think you’re likely to want to kill a noncreature permanent with it, but there are at least Map tokens and things like that that you could kill for free if you happen to have descended on the turn you play this.

Nicanzil, Current Conductor

Rating: 7/10

This is a fantastic payoff for the explore deck. It’s really the kind of card that makes me want to explore as often as possible. Cheating extra lands into play is great given how many extra lands you’re going to be drawing and growing this from time to time isn’t too bad either.

Palani’s Hatcher

Rating: 9/10

This is very reminiscent of one of Ixalan’s best rares, Regisaur Alpha. This version gets you a 5/3 and a 3/3 haste pretty much right away, which is incredible for just 5 mana. If it survives, you get another 3/3 on your next turn. Times have changed since 2017, so this isn’t among the literal best cards in the set anymore, but it’s still a bomb rare and a great card to start your draft with.

Quintorius Kand

Rating: 10/10

Quintorius’s first planeswalker card reminds me a lot of Garruk, Primal Hunter, in that it pluses to create a pretty big token and minuses to gain card advantage. But where Garruk was held back by its casting cost, Quintorius isn’t. More than likely you should use Quintorius to make Spirit tokens and overwhelm your opponent through board presence. A free 3/2 every turn is absurd, and they do a great job protecting the high loyalty Quintorius from incoming attacks. Its ultimate ability is extremely powerful and not that hard to get to, making it a must kill threat. Not to mention that its triggered ability helps keep you alive whenever you discover something or cast spells off its ultimate. It’s an incredible planeswalker and a much-deserved iteration for such a wonderful character.

Saheeli, the Sun’s Brilliance

Rating: 6/10

With so many enters the battlefield triggers lying around in this set, Saheeli ends up having a lot of utility. You can just copy something like The Everflowing Well or Saheeli's Lattice to get some card advantage, or just copy a big creature to get some damage in. Saheeli’s weak on its own, but there are a lot of ways available to make full use of its ability, which actually makes it an exciting build-around option for the set.

Sovereign Okinec Ahau

Rating: 7/10

This is kind of a confusing ability, so let’s break it down. Let’s say I have a 2/2 creature. I then buff it some way, perhaps by giving it a +1/+1 counter and making it a 3/3. When I attack with Okinec, it sees that that creature’s power is 1 greater than its base power, so gives it a +1/+1 counter. It does this for all your creatures, so a great combo with it is Malamet War Scribe, which gives +2/+1 to your team, allowing Okinec to give them all 2 +1/+1 counters. Is that any good? Well, yes, but it seems kind of weak for a mythic rare. In fact, it seems to be about as good as the uncommon Kutzil. Assuming you build around it, Okinec has the potential to dish out a ton of extra counters to your board and will get out of hand really fast. It’s also worth mentioning that it also checks itself, so it’ll grow bigger than a 3/4 in no time.

Squirming Emergence

Rating: 5/10

It’s hard to know if a cheap reanimation spell like this will be useful. Ultimately, 3 mana to bring back a good 5-drop or something like that is probably worth it. I think I’d actively want this if my deck had a really good rare or two that I wanted to get back, otherwise it might feel a bit lacking.

The Ancient One

Rating: 8/10

The Ancient One may not do anything early in the game, but in a deck that’s made of mostly permanent cards, it’s not hard to imagine this coming online pretty early. If you managed to play it on turn 2, it could very easily be attacking around turn 5, especially if you use its second ability. The potential of having an 8/8 for 2 mana sounds pretty good to me, and come on, it’s really cool. You can’t stop me from playing it.

The Belligerent

Rating: 7/10

Attacking with The Belligerent gives you a ton of value, but getting to that point that’s the tricky part. Crew 3 is about the upper limit of what you can consistently do in Limited, but it’s still not a trivial matter. Once it’s done, you could even lose this vehicle in combat and still get to Future Sight for the turn. You can ideally get two or three cards off the top of your deck, assuming you don’t hit multiple lands, and you could even use explore to manipulate this a bit. I think this is well worth going for, it just needs a bit of work.

The Mycotyrant

Rating: 9/10

This is a pretty big beater. It doesn’t do much of anything by itself, but it’s incredibly easy to enable. The fact that its trigger cares about how many times you descended leads to some pretty silly turns. Say when you have enough mana to trade off a creature or two, play a spell that mills you and then drop this and make about four or five fungi on your end step? The fact that this is so easy to enable is what gives it such a high grade.

It's also a great commander!

Uchbenbak, the Great Mistake

Rating: 6/10

Given that blue/black wants to actively mill itself, this can just pop out of the graveyard at some point like some kind of massive Ichorid. It’s not especially powerful, but since you have the ability to mill it and get it without spending any cards, that makes up for a lot of that.

Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz

Rating: 9/10

Since Vito is a 4/4 flier for just 4 mana, it doesn’t even need to do much to be a desirable card. This trigger is pretty messed up though, and a really big incentive for you to be in a sacrifices deck. Imagine the high roll potential. Turn 2, play Bartolomé del Presidio, turn 3 play Tinker's Tote, and then play Vito on 4. Sacrifice your three artifacts to Bart, create your flying demon, and attack for 5. Sure, that’s unlikely to come together, but the card is powerful, nonetheless.

Wail of the Forgotten

Rating: 6/10

I love cheeky little spells like this. It does a nice variety of effects to make me interested, but if you can hit descend 8, it becomes incredible to use all modes at once. Bouncing a creature, discarding a card from your opponent’s hand, and drawing a card of your own is so much value, I’m really excited to try it out.

Zoyowa Lava-Tongue

Rating: 6/10

Zoyowa is a nasty creature to play against. Descending should be relatively easy to do, and despite your opponent getting to choose which thing they get hit by, the fact that you’re getting it for free means you don’t mind which they choose. Zoyowa is also just a good 2/2 deathtouch, so you can’t go wrong even if you’re not descending.

Colorless Artifacts

Buried Treasure

Rating: 4/10

I’m not sure if I want to go through the trouble of actually casting this, but milling it and getting some free value from the graveyard sounds awesome. I’d happily jam this in any descend deck, but not bother elsewhere.

Careening Mine Cart

Rating: 2/10

A vehicle of this size is only just playable. Creating a Treasure token on attacking is a good upside, but not enough to make it something I’d be actively looking for.

Cartographer’s Companion

Rating: 1/10

Map tokens may be useful, but this is just a little too much on the weak side for me.

Chimil, the Inner Sun

Rating: 9/10

Chimil is a real powerhouse. A free spell out of your deck every turn is just ridiculous. The only turn where this feels bad is the turn you play it, since you spend 6 mana and only get a random spell that costs 5 or less. But as the game progresses, each turn you keep getting free advantage, and it has to be stopped. Better yet, since this is colorless, any deck other than the most aggressive will be able to play this.

Compass Gnome

Rating: 2/10

Cards like this are always a little on the weak side, even if you need mana fixing. I’m interested in using this to find a cave for decks that need them, but it just isn’t good enough otherwise.

Contested Game Ball

Rating: 3/10

I have an issue with a card that carries such a hefty downside to it. It’s a really cool design, but I doubt that Limited play will often allow you to keep control of it for too long. If your opponent gets to draw more cards than you, this is pretty disastrous. If you believe that your deck can block a lot of hits and protect this while also being capable of stealing it back, it could be worth trying out.

Digsite Conservator

Rating: 4/10

Graveyard hate looks like it might be really strong in this format, so I’m very interested in that. You really should look to use this at a time when you can pay the 4 mana, though that’s actually quite expensive. Discover 4 is more likely to hit a 2- or 3- drop that you overpaid for. Maybe I’m being a little too negative on this side of it, but the card is still a useful package.

Disruptor Wanderglyph

Rating: 2/10

This creature is actually quite big, considering it’s colorless. Hating on the graveyard is fairly significant in this set, but I don’t think that’s enough of a reason for this to make the main deck. Good sideboard option though.

Hoverstone Pilgrim

Rating: 2/10

Epitaph Golem is an interesting card for sure, but not a particularly playable one unless you’re in one specific kind of deck. Giving it flying and ward doesn’t change the equation much at all. Basically, if you’re milling yourself, you can use this ability to fill your deck back up with spells. That’s about it. Outside of that, you don’t want this card at all.

Hunter’s Blowgun

Rating: 1/10

Deathtouch would be good, but it’s a far better ability to have on defense. I don’t think any of this format’s archetypes care about this, so I doubt it’s good enough to see much play.

Matzalantli, the Great Door / The Core

Rating: 4/10

Transforming Matzalantli is really not a good idea. We only have access to four permanent types in this format, unless you’re lucky enough to open Quintorius. You need at least one each of artifact, creature, enchantment, and land. Even if you’re able to assemble that, all it transforms into is a land that taps for a ton of mana, which we probably can’t even use. Still, a 3-mana artifact that taps to loot is going to be useful in some decks, particularly one that’s trying to descend.

Roaming Throne

Rating: 5/10

Before you get to the main abilities, this is just a 4/4 for 4 with ward 2. That’s fairly decent, and any deck can play it. The other abilities it has don’t amount to all that much. If you have a good triggered ability in your deck, you can use this and sometimes double it, but it isn’t all that likely to come together. Still, big vanilla creatures are fine.

Runaway Boulder

Rating: 4/10

Anyone else getting Indiana Jones vibes? I actually really like this. Six mana for 6 damage is pretty weak, but any deck can have access to it. The best part is the ability to cycle it since it’s a handy way to trigger descend abilities cheaply. Draw it early, cycle it for value. Draw it late, kill a creature. Not too bad at all.

Scampering Surveyor

Rating: 6/10

Once upon a time, back in Rise of the Eldrazi, Ondu Giant was considered the best green common. The fact that we can have this effect in any deck in this format sounds great. Ramp, color fixing, and the ability to dig up a cave all in one card is awesome.

Sorcerous Spyglass

Rating: 1/10

Another great reprint. Sorcerous Spyglass is a really nice variation on the classic Pithing Needle, but really not something we want in Limited. Stopping the activated abilities of one card just isn’t worth spending a card on. It could have potential out of the sideboard against something extremely powerful, like Quintorius for example, but that’s where it should stay.

Sunbird Standard / Sunbird Effigy

Rating: 2/10

If you want a mana rock, I guess this is fine, but I don’t think that you do. Transforming it sounds pretty bad unless you have several colors’ worth of permanents to craft into it, which sadly not many decks will actually be able to do.

Swashbuckler’s Whip

Rating: 4/10

What a weird design! Turning something into a tapper of some kind sounds good, but 2 mana to tap something down is really slow and weak. It might be nice to equip something that triggers an ability when it taps. Late game this becomes really good, since you can sink a ton of mana into it to cast any random spell from your deck each turn. I think this is enough to be interested in, though I wouldn’t be too surprised to see it flop.

Tarrian’s Soulcleaver

Rating: 2/10

There are too many hoops to jump through before this starts giving you an ability worth its mana cost. You clearly have to be in a sacrifice deck, making it effectively a white/black gold card. Even then, it’s not that good. I’d like it if I was really heavily into the theme, but a lot needs to go right.

The Millennium Calendar

Rating: 0/10

Okay then, quick math lesson. 2^10=1024, which means that if you start at one counter on The Millenium Calendar, you need to activate it ten times to reach the 1000 time counters you need. Realistically, that’s actually more like six or seven activations since it’ll pick up a bunch of free counters from you untapping. Can you afford to spend six turns activating this? The answer is no. It does absolutely nothing else, you need to survive long enough for it to happen, it’s horrible if you draw it late, and it can be easily destroyed. All that adds up to a pretty terrible card. But hey, fun with exponentials!

Threefold Thunderhulk

Rating: 9/10

This is really quite an obscene rare. You start with a 3/3 and three 1/1s, then you keep creating more 1/1s when you get to attack. Even more so, you can eat up the little 1/1s to make the big guy even bigger and create more tokens when it attacks. Seven is a lot to ask, but it basically takes over the game, and that’s definitely worth it.

Throne of the Grim Captain / The Grim Captain

Rating: 7/10

A cheap artifact that mills you for 2 every turn definitely has its place in this format. It’s definitely more at home in blue/black, and funnily enough that’s the color combination that should be able to transform it the easiest. If I picked this up early in a draft, I’d do my best to make sure I had the right types in my deck to transform it because doing so is absolutely ridiculous. You get a massive Thraximundar-style creature which will dominate the game, and given that you’ll be milling yourself so quickly, it shouldn’t even be that hard to find all the creatures you need.

Treasure Map / Treasure Cove

Rating: 8/10

This was always one of my favorite cards from the original Ixalan. You just use it to get a tiny bit of advantage for a few turns, and then it explodes into a mass of Treasures which you can even sacrifice to draw cards. This is an incredible card which basically any deck can play.

Lands

Captivating Cave

Rating: 5/10

While I’m not a fan of Unknown Shores, the card has genuinely become a bit better in recent sets. Being a cave and the ability to cash it in for some +1/+1 counters later is pretty nice, and I reckon this’ll be one of the better caves to pick up.

Cavern of Souls

Rating: 1/10

Cavern of Souls is the most impactful reprint in this set, but it doesn’t really do anything for us in Limited. Only dinosaurs are a kindred archetype in this set, so it doesn’t really fit anywhere. There aren’t even that many counterspells to get around. You probably should money draft it, but just don’t put it in your deck.

Cavernous Maw

Rating: 4/10

Creature lands like this aren’t all that good anymore, since we really value being able to tap for colored mana over colorless. The biggest thing about this card is the fact that it’s a cave. We’ve seen a lot of reasons as to why you might want a lot of caves in your deck and honestly, I’d take a colorless cave if it enabled some of these cards.

Echoing Deeps

Rating: 4/10

Just like Cavernous Maw, the main reason to want this is because it’s a cave. Copying a land in your graveyard isn’t that relevant, but it can be an extra hidden cave fairly often. Also, a rules note, you can choose not to copy anything and this enters untapped, so that might come up too.

Forgotten Monument

Rating: 3/10

I don’t think this ability is very good at all. Any deck that plays a large number of caves is fairly likely to be able to color fix through other means. But still, I’ll say it again, you might just want a cave, so this isn’t completely awful.

The Hidden Caves (Hidden Cataract, Hidden Courtyard, Hidden Necropolis, Hidden Nursery, Hidden Volcano)

Rating: 5/10

These are some of the best “spell” lands we’ve ever seen at common. The cave type is very relevant for some decks, but my first impression of this set is that it’ll play very slowly, so most decks would be happy to pick up a couple of these in their own colors to be able to cast free spells at some point.

Pit of Offerings

Rating: 4/10

This is such a weird card. It’s a cave, that’s great. Graveyard hate is pretty relevant in this set, so a mini-Bojuka Bog is quite welcome. But it doesn’t fix your colors properly. It does so later into the game, which is when you need fixing the least. It’s probably fine, especially if you want caves, but don’t rely on it to help you color fix.

Promising Vein

Rating: 4/10

This is basically a functional reprint of Shire Terrace from Lord of the Rings, but what we found back then is that this is significantly worse than an Evolving Wilds. Whereas you’d easily put Evolving Wilds into any deck to fix the colors, Shire Terrace was more of a liability and ended up only worth it to splash a third color. This version is a cave, so that’s a very real upside, but I wouldn’t take it if I didn’t want a cave.

The Restless Lands (Restless Anchorage, Restless Prairie, Restless Reef, Restless Ridgeline, Restless Vents)

Rating: 7/10

Closing out the cycle that we started in Wilds of Eldraine, we have a set of sweet creature duals. Every single one of these is powerful, and you should actively take them if you’re in these color combinations. Some of them might even be worth splashing for when you’re only one of their colors. I’m particularly looking at the blue/black and red/green ones for that, but honestly all of them look strong and I’d start out assuming they’re all excellent.

Sunken Citadel

Rating: 5/10

I’m not surprised that an Uncharted Haven that’s a cave is in this set. It’s a shame it’s a rare, but the second ability is pretty good, and you can use it to sacrifice your caves or animate your creature lands a little faster, so that’s a nice plus.

Volatile Fault

Rating: 3/10

Field of Ruin is basically unplayable, but this is a cave. And other players will have a fair few caves of their own, so this is far from unplayable. It’s not particularly good, but it’s at least useful.

Wrap Up

Soulcoil Viper | Illustration by Allen Douglas

I hope you’ve enjoyed my take on this set. I actually drafted a bunch of Wilds of Eldraine, and I’ll probably draft a lot of this set too. It looks really cool and I just hope it isn’t aggressive again.

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Until next time, take care of yourselves!