Taking a break from the Jailhouse series today to check in on Kaldheim spoilers. I've already talked about Sarulf here if you want to check that out, but we've seen a lot of new cards since then. There's some stuff that's between interesting and good for us, and there's some stuff that's between interesting and format defining against us.
FYI, I'm gonna talk about some cards that are leaked and not official spoilers. I'll let you know when that's going to start and we'll cover the non-leak cards first.
Let's start off with this thing.
Metagames get into a weird place when there are forces that push players to play one-color decks. If you were playing during the Return to Ravnica/Theros metagame, you probably remember Mono Black Devotion, Mono Blue Devotion, Mono Green Devotion, Mono Red Devotion, and Mono White Devotion. The devotion mechanic made you really want to play a single color to maximize its effect. That was one of the forces there, but the other was Mutavault. It was a card so strong that you'd rather play fewer colors and therefore weaker spells in order to cut dual lands from your deck and not get color-screwed. A hand of a bunch of black spells, swamps, and a Mutavault was usually better than a hand of multi-colored spells, dual lands, and no Mutavault.
This has a pretty significant homogenizing effect on deckbuilding. When you are strapped to playing one color, then you usually just play all the best cards in that color. There was a little bit of room to customize, but if your opponent played a swamp on turn one, you could usually guess about 55 cards that were in their deck. Customizing and tinkering your deck over time was reduced to which C- removal spells you wanted in your couple of flex slots. And the thing is, what can you realistically do to change it? If you try to come up with some neat new deck that attacked the mono-color decks, you were either just playing a mono-color deck with worse cards, or you were playing multiple colors and therefore not being able to play Mutavault.
To be fair, I honestly liked this format a lot. I was able to do a little bit of deck tuning and customization within the restrictions of the format, and the decks themselves were not the most egregious things to have to play against. Lots of players complained about Pack Rat and Thoughtseize, but players will always complain about whatever they lose to. However, a couple of 2019-2020 power-level printings and this format would have been awful. Imagine if there were only five decks you could play, and they were all one color, but one deck had a card as strong as Omnath or Oko or Uro.
Snow is a mechanic that's similar to Devotion and Mutavault because it draws you into playing just one color. We haven't seen all of the payoffs that we're going to get for Snow decks, but with Faceless Haven in the deck, it doesn't have to be much. It's not as good a card as Mutavault, but it does something that no other deck really can do to this level. The vigilance is very strong and it hits really hard.
I think that this card could make mono-blue tempo decks and mono-black aggro decks really good in this format. Those two decks aren't too far off of being solid metagame contenders on their own, and now they get to have something that few other decks will get to have, to go along with how consistent their game plan and mana bases are. I also think that we'll have to take a hard look at Mono-Black midrange. When you can cut color consistency issues out of your deck but not go down on power, it's very enticing. Either way, I also think this might just turn into a metagame staple, and something we have in the back of our minds when we build decks.
When you compare this card to other Simic Mythics like Oko, Uro, and Hydroid Krasis, it definitely seems worse. But how do you beat it? My guess is that Sultai won't play this card because the card quality of that deck is so high already, but if they do then it's certainly going to be trouble.
I also just wanted to mention this card because I don't know if there will be a cycle of them or if any of the ones in our colors will be good, but I'm always up for some value lands. Also, I knew Gavony Township, and this sir, is no Gavony Township.
Great numbers, flying and lifelink go very well together, but we just barely got Nighthawk Scavenger given to us and turned it down. This card starts to look good when our opponents have not just Planeswalkers, but Planeswalkers that have creature removal abilities. Eradicator Valkyrie is awful against Nissa and Narset, but would be good in a format where Chandra was popular, or Teferi Time Raveler was legal.
So about the playability, it's honestly not that far off. You get two 2/2 bodies and a little extra value, which depending on what that extra value is, we start getting into Huntmaster of the Fells territory. But we don't really have anything (other than the Chariot itself, ostensibly) that makes tokens. We also don't play a ton of creatures that have four power, so the vehicle might just sit around and not do much after the cats are gone. If we could depend on giving our creatures pseudo-haste with the vehicle or creating some tokens, I'd be more interested. It's definitely something to keep an eye on, because it lines up really well against Gruul, and there are some token generators and four-power creatures that aren't that far off from being playable. Maybe Thrash/Threat or Sarkhan the Masterless?
I want to compare this with Eldest Reborn, but it's not really a card advantage engine like that. It's closer to Vraska Golgari Queen, except the effects that you get after the initial removal spell ability are worse. In my mind it's more like Maelstrom Pulse than anything, and it doesn't give the upside of getting some free wins when your opponents draw multiples of their creatures.
It takes a lot for me to completely dismiss a card as versatile as a dual-face modal card like this, but I don't think we want to be doing either half, and both halves cost a lot of mana.
This one was just spoiled and I haven't quite wrapped my head around it yet. I don't think it's going to work in a deck without good graveyard synergies, but a three-mana 6/6 is just so big. It doesn't really have to be in play for very long to have a pretty important effect against Gruul, you cast it, you threaten to block for a couple turns, then you cash it in when you run out of food. Unlike something like Rotting Regisaur, you can use the back half when the body isn't good, which also seems like it's a pretty solid card in the right matchup. I'm skeptical but I also think that there's so many options with it that I wouldn't be surprised if it found a place.
Okay, so this one I'm bullish on. First of all, it's hard to judge how good Valki is because it has a pretty amazing backup plan if you draw it in the late game. These dual faced cards are so versatile. Being a two-drop creature is supposed to be a big cost, since later on in the game you don't want to be drawing Goblin Piker. But Valki gets around this pretty well.
Second, this is as high-floor high-ceiling as it gets. If you trade your two drop with a Fatal Push, okay fine. But if they don't have it, or you Thoughtseize it, or they used it on your Scavenging Ooze, all of a sudden we are stealing their Uro and getting Uro triggers on turn three. Against Gruul it protects itself by stealing Bonecrusher Giant if need be, and saves you damage by taking their haste creature, trading in combat, then they can only play their haste creature post-combat. If they Stomp it (or Swift End it) in response to the trigger, they lose a different creature forever. Also lol if they kept their hand based on playing Mammoths as lands. Add to that it's also an out to Muxus and Goblins don't have a ton of ability to get it off the table, you get information, it's great against Kroxa, it turns itself into a mana sink if you take something big. This thing does a lot of stuff for a card that's such low investment.
Third, if you've played Inscription of Ruin before, you know that the ability to have a useful cheap play that can go toe-to-toe against our opponent's expensive stuff late really turns matchups around. Plenty of times I've been dead to rights against Sultai or a control deck and cast a full blast Inscription and won the game. All that from a Mind Rot/Smother flex slot card. Tibalt is also really strong against Uro, which makes it extra valuable as an expensive card. We're not supposed to have this much late game power if we're also playing cheap cards and keeping our curve low.
The last thing I want to say about Valki is that in the Jund deck as we have it built now, Valki definitely is easy to make space for. I've been slamming my head against the wall trying to find the right two-drops to go alongside Scavenging Ooze and Chevill, and Valki is certainly high on power level and can do its own thing. We have a deck that both wants early plays to keep up against aggro decks and wants to play big spells to turn the corner. I like it a lot.
--Leaks--
Some folks in a Historic Midrange discord I'm in have been having good experiences with Shaper's Sanctuary out of the sideboard lately. It seems like you need a lot to go right, like they have targeted removal spells, you have a lot of creatures, and the strength of your creatures necessitates them killing them instead of just casting Uros and Nissas or Wraths and Sharks. If those things are in play, though, it's pretty amazing to be able to draw a bunch of cards for one mana, and it's even better in multiples. Battle Mammoth gives us that same effect but without costing a card, and it has huge stats.
I haven't spoken about Foretell because it's not on any of the stuff that seems interesting to me, but I think that it's very useful. Build your deck however you want, there will still be hands you draw where you're not really doing anything useful on turn two. When that's the case, you can put that mana to good use and get Mammoth out a turn early. That might not seem that useful, but Mammoth represents a huge roadblock for Gruul and other aggro decks, so getting something like this out a turn early represents saving a lot of damage.
As I'll likely talk about in the next blog post, I'm not sure if a five mana or more threat has a place in the deck. There are a lot of good options between Elder Gargaroth, Thragtusk, Glorybringer, Angrath the Flame Chained, and more, each with their own set of pros and cons. But Battle Mammoth gives you the best option of all of them, which is of course, to not be five mana. Lots of rate, lots of upside, lots of flexibility, but it still just might be too much mana.
This card impressed me right up until I saw Valki, but I think it might have potential. In the Robber of the Rich/Burning Tree Emissary format, 2/2 First Strike is solid enough that if you have some late game value it might be worth it. Again, if it eats a Fatal Push, then it's okay. It's a low investment card that can get out of hand if not dealt with, fills the curve, and pressures planeswalkers and life totals. Getting a single 5/5 out of the deal is great, but it has potential for a lot more. There's a lot of play here that I think is worth trying out. Even if you get a dragon one out of every ten times you cast it, the threat is there and your opponent really can't afford letting you untap with this.
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Spoilers keep rolling in, so I'll keep up with any cool stuff I see. There's usually some kind of Doom Blade/Hero's Downfall type thing to check out that we're missing at the moment, so I expect something like that to show up. I really like the look of the set. Dual faced cards and Foretell cards are the type of thing that give players lots of options, which is what we're looking for in midrange decks. Let me know your opinions in the comments, and thanks for reading.
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