New spoilers, let's go.
I think that this is going to do less than Radha for us almost all of the time. Radha fights better, is easier to cast in Jund, and doesn't require any weird deck construction to get her going. Augur of Autumn is clearly at its best when you're likely to have creatures on top, and you're likely to have multiple creatures in play at once. That doesn't seem to be what we're doing these days, but there is some power there. I just don't like our chances if this is going to be a little worse than Radha most of the time and also we're not even playing Radha much.
Three drop creature that trades with Questing Beast sized creatures, deals a lot of damage, and is good against removal because they two for one themselves by using a removal spell on it. They can't really just let you beat them up with a 4/3, so they have to let you net a card at some point. It doesn't look like much, but might hit that sweet spot like Bonecrusher Giant, where there's just enough rate to threaten them effectively and also enough defensive size to hold off attackers. Trading off with a creature and getting a Clue token out of the deal is excellent when that's what you want to be doing, and forcing them to have removal and then gaining card advantage for it later is also excellent. An excellent card, my biggest concern is the plethora of other three drop cards available to us we could be playing instead. But I like it. Like I was talking about with Wrenn and Seven and new Arlinn, putting a bunch of numbers on the battlefield without doing anything disruptive isn't always going to be what we want to do, but the difference between that strategy at three mana versus four or five is huge. For what it's worth, this card seems awesome in Standard and I'm excited to try it with Esika's Chariot.
I was getting myself a little bit interested in this card until I saw the next card I'm going to show, but this one has its merits as well. 1B for 2/3 Deathtouch is already doing work for us, since it dodges a lot of the cheap removal and can't be easily attacked into. Moving past that, this gets pretty powerful in the later stages of the game, but is making decayed tokens something we're interested in doing? I like blocking, and I like forcing opponents to have removal for my creatures instead of just absorbing some damage and calling it a day. The unkicked body is relevant, for sure, and the kicker is a bonus, but none of the deals here are particularly exciting, and the tokens aren't particularly useful.
It's important to note that this is a 2 drop creature with an ability when it enters play. That is so, so much better than Kicker, since you can cast it with three mana open and in the event it gets destroyed or countered, use three mana on something else if you'd like. The same is true with the next card.
This card is incredible. I don't know when I've seen a card with this much flexibility and rate rolled into the same card. I just barely got done talking about how the problem with Goblin Dark Dwellers is that it's a five mana card in an increasingly tempo-dependent format. Bloodthirsty Adversary has the best way to play a five drop and get around this drawback, by not costing five mana.
First, two mana 2/2 Haste is a card that has its applications. Michael Majors was on The Resleeveables and said that haste is an underrated enters the battlefield ability and no one seems to realize it. The ability to go after Planeswalkers and deal some burst damage the opponent wasn't planning on is a big deal. The ability to threaten a Narset or Teferi is nice. Plus, sometimes you just have no other play on turn two and want something on the board. Additionally, this is a nice safety valve to get around graveyard hate. You can Thoughtseize them and let them keep their Rest in Peace or whatever, just start bashing.
In addition to the 2/2 Haste for 2 plan, I think there's a real argument that 3/3 Haste is as good or sometimes better than 4/4 Menace, and if that's the case, we're cruising with this card. Dark Dwellers has already been awesome for this deck, and that card comes with much less flexibility than the Adversary (even though it's a very flexible card). Even if not, there's just so much going on here.
The combination of this card and Inscription of Ruin is bonkers. First, you've got your simple Mind Rot and 3/3 haste combo, which is great. Then, you've got the removal spell plus 3/3 haste creature that completely flips a race situation. Then there's make my Adversary a 3/3 haste, use Inscription to bring back another Adversary in my graveyard and now I've got five power with haste attacking you or your planeswalkers, or get back an Ooze and eat your Kroxa or Phoenix, or get back Chevill and let him fuck people up. That's awesome, but you'll also run into situations where you're at six mana with an Inscription in your hand and rebuy your Adversary and flash back that same Inscription, basically getting the value of a full kicked Inscription but for only six mana. It's of course still awesome with Eliminate, Maelstrom Pulse, and Kolaghan's Command.
Eight mana isn't likely to happen that often, but when it does, it becomes very hard to lose. Now we're getting into Hydroid Krasis territory, where you can get tons of card advantage and a race swinging battlefield presence in one topdeck. Even a 4/4 haste that casts a removal spell and an Abundant Harvest is going to win a huge amount of games.
One more thing, cards like this become much better after sideboard when you can board in knockout blow cards and then cast them again. Go Blank is clearly a good one, but there are sure to be other things in the format as new stuff comes out. Witch's Vengeance and Necromentia come to mind, given the right metagames. Also of note, this card, for no reason, gets around Grafdigger's Cage. It also is Jegantha-ready, unlike Dark Dwellers.
I'd be shocked if Adversary wasn't the best card in the set, for us anyways. Like I said, it's got flexibility on top of flexibility, it's got rate, it's doing all the stuff we want to be doing at whatever point of the game we happen to be at. I'm pumped.
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That's likely going to be it for spoilers for this set, I can't imagine too many cards making as much of a splash as the red Adversary and Briarbridge Tracker, but we still don't have the green Adversary so who knows. If anything really exciting pops up, then I might post about it here, but either way, I'll catch you on Twitch or on Youtube soon. Also, for no good reason other than I think it would be fun and make for some good material, hit me up on Twitter for mailbag questions. That could be a fun post. Thanks for reading.
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