Thursday, it was sorta leaked that there would be a new Historic Anthology. Friday the cards were announced. Next Thursday, March 11th, the cards go live on Arena. Let's check them out.
I don't think any of these cards will be big players. There's a lot of duds in this Anthology. I think that's actually a good thing. I see a lot of posts on Reddit and whatever about what your Historic Anthology wish list would be, and lots of people write in stuff like Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile and even stuff like Wasteland. My opinion is that Historic is good the way it is. I don't want a ton of changes. Little new toys to play with are cool, but I'm having a good time as is. If it ain't broke.
What's funny about Coldsteel Heart is that it's a mana rock that's bad with Forsaken Monument. That said, most of the Mind Stone decks in the format are single colored, since Mind Stone et al only add colorless mana. That doesn't have to be the case anymore. Coldsteel Heart is the closest thing to Farseek we have, so if we ever want to go towards a Farseek style Jund deck a la INN/RTR Standard, now is the time. And it's colorless too, so it's probably even a better card than Farseek, but that probably depends a lot on context. I think this card will be good in Grixis control.
Maybe it's a little weak, but Think Twice always impressed me when it was in Standard, and I've seen it do some good work in Modern as well. Granted, Modern five years ago was kind of a different animal, but this is a lot more useful than it looks. I think that one thing that keeps UW Control in check in Historic is that there aren't that many good two mana instants to use with Teferi when you cast him on your fifth turn. Think Twice isn't going to change that by itself, but it's a start.
I feel like Wizards really didn't want to shake things up in Historic too badly, because this is definitely the worst of the swords. It's great on cheap utility creatures, since you will often have leftover mana dorks lying around to either equip or use to cast it quickly. It gives you a bunch of staying power and value. However, Collected Company does all those things too, and this is a miss with Company, so it's gonna be tough for it to find a home. Maybe it's a sideboard card.
This card saw a lot of play in Standard, but it's exactly the type of card we like playing against. We are in the market for two-for-oneing our opponent at every opportunity. The key is to have cheap creatures, so that you aren't losing a bunch of mana on the exchange, and that the cards you draw off your clue are castable the turn you crack it. For now I think that Baffling End is better, but if it picks up in usage we might want to just have it in mind when deckbuilding.
It's possible that there's a Tempered Steel deck out there that just needed Blinkmoth Nexus to become viable. If that's the case, then it'll be really good there. Bonesplitter is a card that puts out a lot of damage really quickly for not much mana. It might have a home in an artifact-based creature deck as well.
I think this is subtly the best card of the bunch. It's going to make the Company decks a lot more consistent. You can't play all three drop creatures, but you also need to make sure that when you hit your cheap stuff off Company they are impactful. Inspector does that really well, plus it basically cycles in the late game when you're digging for more Companys. Also, it might be the piece that was missing for Toolcraft Examplar to see more play. Bonesplitter does that too.
Shadow loses a lot by not having Fetchlands in the format. First is that they make you lose 1 life, but they also give you more control over your life total. You can take just one damage if you want, or three damage. Historic also doesn't have Street Wraith or any Phyrexian Mana stuff, which is another knock. Additionally, Historic does have a lot of the answers to Death's Shadow, like Fatal Push, Bloodchief's Thirst, and Skyclave Apparition. What Historic does have, though, is Lurrus. Death's Shadow can pretty easily slot in to Rakdos Arcanist, since Scourge of Skyclave was already seeing some play and doing okay.
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That just about covers it. Really not a huge shake up, just a few cards that might see some play but won't turn the metagame on its head or anything. That's probably for the best. Don't go on Reddit and ask Wizards to put Wasteland in Historic please. I'm more interested in Strixhaven than anything else, but we're also supposed to getting Pioneer Remastered somewhere down the line. Anyways, I just put a new video on Youtube and you can check it out here. Thanks for reading.
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