Shame Those Boys Couldn't Be More Copacetic

My personal theory is that the reason the Ravnica sets are some of Magic's best sets is because they create an environment for good games to take place. There is plenty of mana fixing, good utility spells, and lots of different color pairings to build a cohesive deck around. The same can be said of Khans of Tarkir, which might have been the last time that a Standard format was really fun, at least in my eyes. Multicolor sets allow designers and developers to push the envelope on rate a little bit while still being beautiful and simple. And they can get away with it because most of the cool unique stuff they're doing are just utility spells. A card like Lightning Helix is above-rate, but at its core it's just a burn spell, it won't ever destroy a format. These are the kinds of cards that I look for in a set like this, cheap and versatile utility spells. And in New Capenna, there's plenty of that to be had, but maybe a little less of it in the Jund colors.

Riveteers Charm is excellent, above my expectations for sure. I was expecting something more in the way of Void Rend or Endless Detour in Jund colors, and didn't really get it. We did get a lot of cool stuff though, so let's check it out.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this card for a long time and I think I'm just going to have to admit that I have no idea if it's going to be good or not. Well, I mean, it's going to be good, but I don't know if it's a "You're going to need a reason to not play this in a Black and Red deck" type of card or a "If you have the pieces to support it, it will make your main deck" type of card.

Ob Nixilis is a three mana planeswalker that can defend itself, and if we were to stop right there, it's absolutely worth trying out. Beyond that, I like the synergy that Ob Nixilis has with the second copy of itself, and the squeeze that its +1 ability puts you in is going to be helpful either way. It looks like it has good synergy with Bloodtithe Harvester, not only because it's a creature you don't mind using for the Casualty ability, but because the additional pressure put on by cheap creatures will force the opponent to discard cards to the +1 ability more often. It also will have some nice synergy with Fable of the Mirror Breaker, allowing you to sacrifice Kiki Jiki's tokens instead of real creatures. And, it probably won't come up too often, but an Ooze that gets out of control big can be sacrificed and dome the opponent for seven out of nowhere.

The potential is there, but I'm not going to come out and say it's a 10/10 A+ Superstar until I've tried it.

Similarly to Play with Fire, anything that's at least a little close to straight Lightning Bolt needs to be considered. My gut feeling here is that I'm going to have a tough time playing Strangle in a format with Fatal Push or Bloodchief's Thirst, but who knows. It's not only worth a shot, but also worth keeping in the back of your mind for the next time a Narset deck or whatever turns into the best thing to be doing.

Graveyard hate ranges somewhere from Leyline of the Void to, like, Scavenging Ooze, where Leyline is a blunt-object sideboard card windmill slam, and the power behind Scavenging Ooze is that it's a maindeckable card with an effect that's usually not in your deck for game one. Cards like Hearse are in a weird spot where, it's clearly effective against a graveyard deck, but if it's not quite maindeckable, and it's not the hardest hitting graveyard hate you can put in your board, where does it see play? The thing about the Hearse is that, depending on the format you're playing, tapping to exile two cards might be the most graveyard hate you need. It does this every turn, at instant speed, for no mana. It deals with two Phoenixes at once, it keeps their delve food low, it eats Kroxa, it can get rid of a Parhelion, it counters Bala Ged Recovery. If Hearse can play as your go-to graveyard hate, then it's a big deal, because you can get in some outrageous attacks with this thing. Turn two Hearse, eat your graveyard for a while, attack for 20. That's an actual plan against what's probably the number one deck in Pioneer. I think the potential is there, and the vehicle ability makes Hearse a card you might not mind bringing in even if the only thing they have going on is a couple miser's Kroxas or something. I don't think I'd suggest Hearse for Modern or Vintage, but if the Hearse is all the graveyard hate you need for Pioneer, then it could absolutely be an upgrade to Leyline and other straight-up graveyard hate decks.

The Underdog looks like a card that is tailor made to go in a deck that runs Ob Nixilis, that's for sure. Additionally, though, it looks like the kind of card that goes in a deck that is in the market for some early pressure but doesn't mind the game going late. Usually this type of card has an "enters the battlefield tapped" or "can't block" type of clause that makes it really only good at offense and not defense, but Underdog is also totally fine with trading off with an opposing creature and giving you a couple of pseudo-Castle Locthwain activations later on. My gut feeling here is that this is the type of card that we're looking for, but might not be the power level necessary for Pioneer. I don't know though, I've been impressed with Bloodtithe Harvester, just because it's a 3/2 for two with some extra stuff thrown in, and that's a great description for Underdog, too. I think I'll start with two of these and see how it goes, I don't have high hopes but wouldn't be surprised if it worked out.

A card that I was hoping for out of this set was a Jund Siege Rhino or Huntmaster type of card, something that could gum up a board, could swing a race, and also be good against opposing removal. The Envoy looks like a solid enough card, but not exactly what I was hoping for. However, untapping with an Envoy is going to translate into wins a large amount of the time for a four mana card, so it's worth taking a look at. The Blitz mechanic on it is especially exciting, because it works well with cheap aggressive creatures in two ways. First, as Jamie Wakefield says, it's the last fatty that kills you, so if the opponent is under pressure and has to fire off removal spells against your early threats, the Envoy is more likely to survive and take over the game. Secondly, Blitzing in for five burst damage will steal some games that your cheap creatures got started. Because of that, I think the Envoy is well suited for an aggressive-slanted Jund deck. In general, as far as Pioneer is concerned, I'm wary of a card that costs this much and dies to a Chandra, but it's powerful enough to try. There are a lot of good things going on here.

This is an interesting one. The power is certainly there, especially in Pioneer. Most decks will have something along the lines of Oni-Cult Anvil, Trail of Crumbs, Portable Hole, Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Esika's Chariot, the list goes on. Tagging a Greasefang plus a Portable Hole or a Winota plus a Fable of the Mirror Breaker on chapter two can turn a game around for sure. At its worst, it's Hero's Downfall. In the end, again, I think it's worth trying out, but four mana is a lot. When it's good it's great, but it might be too hard to engineer the game to a point where this will swing it for you. For what it's worth, Unleash the Inferno might be the sickest card name ever.

I can't really imagine playing this in Historic or Pioneer, but man this makes me want to play Standard again. I just love Thragtusk, and while it's easy to look at this and think of it as a nerfed Thragtusk, there are plenty of cases where it's actually the better card. The token it leaves behind is a 4/4, big enough to crew a Chariot and also big enough to beat serious face. Trample is a big deal on a card like this too, where they can't just chump block it, so they might have to trade, which gives you your value. The Blitz is kind of an afterthought, but six mana to kill a planeswalker, gain three life, make a 4/4, and draw a card, sounds good to me. It's got amazing synergy with Fable of the Mirror Breaker. Also I love the art. It's a rhino wearing suspenders holding a gigantic golden wrench, and in the background is a mural of himself. I really want to bonk some people with a gigantic golden wrench.

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These are the cards that I think have the most potential for Jund in this set. If you think I missed any or my evaluations are stupid, let me know in the comments or harass me about it on Twitter. I didn't do any streaming last weekend due to being away for family obligations, but I'll be rectifying that for this weekend's Pioneer Challenges. Check it out if you're interested. Thanks for reading.

Some Rise Some Fall Some Climb

Let's go.

Mode one is Crackling Doom that hits Planeswalkers but doesn't deal 2 damage. This would be a Standard playable card in its own right, probably wouldn't see much play because of the restrictive mana cost, but a deck in these colors might consider it. It hits Goldspan at a mana advantage, so that's a big deal in its own right. This is likely worse than a Hero's Downfall, but there will be cases where this wins you games where Downfall wouldn't, like against stuff with Hexproof or against Dive Down type stuff. One of the reasons I like Abrupt Decay at the moment in Pioneer is to stop Graveyard Trespasser cleanly, and this does that as well, plus you don't take 2 damage from Bonecrusher Giant.

The fact that this hits planeswalkers is a huge deal. I try to incorporate things like Dreadbore, Murderous Rider, and Bloodchief's Thirst into my decks when I can, so it's very welcome to be an answer to hard to answer things. The decks that run few creatures and your removal is bad against will often have planeswalkers, which can be hard to deal with if you're not getting under them. I lost a game to Jace, Wielder of Mysteries on stream this weekend when I had a Phoenix opponent locked out of the game, so this would put a stop to that. This mode is excellent, about as good as could be expected.

Mode three is just a Tormod's Crypt activation, which seems like it's not worth three mana until your opponent has three Arclight Phoenix triggers on the stack. What makes Dredge and Dredge-adjacent decks so good is not that there aren't graveyard hate options, it's that you actually have to put those cards into your deck. When it's good, it will be really good, and when it's not, the other two modes on this card are flexible enough that you would play it with just two modes.

Mode two is the big one and maybe most important one, because it's the proactive one. The problem with removal spells is that if your opponent doesn't do anything, and all you have is removal in your hand, then you don't do anything either. This mode lets you punish your opponent for wasting their mana by giving you some advantage. It also lets us play it in the main deck and we'll never run into a matchup where it's dead. Also, it's just a lot of cards. Lots of times your opponent doesn't have anything going on with their graveyard, lots of times they don't have creatures or planeswalkers in play, but even if they do, you might use this mode anyways. When discussing Abzan Charm, Patrick Chapin once said that if you're on the fence between exiling a creature and drawing two cards, you should usually draw two cards, and that is likely to be the case with Riveteers Charm too.

I wouldn't say that this effect is restrictive on your deckbuilding, but some cards are going to be better to flip than others. The first thing that comes to mind is Bonecrusher Giant, who can just be cast as a 4/3 if the removal spell doesn't line up. The same is true with Bloodthirsty Adversary, which can either go top rope in the late game or just be a 2/2 haste and allow you to cast multiple spells off one Charm. Kolaghan's Command and Witherbloom Command are great because there are lots of options and you can usually find one that will work. The removal spells you do play will want to be as versatile as possible so they can be useful more of the time, so things like Maelstrom Pulse or Mythos of Nethroi. Also, of course, cheap creatures. I think you're going to want to keep your mana costs down a little bit so you're more likely to be able to cast two cards out of it. Casting this on their end step turn three and flipping a five drop won't work, so four might be as high as our curve wants to go. But that's okay now, because you can get away with cheaper spells when you have card advantage built into your deck. Funny enough, Riveteers Charm itself isn't the greatest hit, but again, you might use the draw mode even if your opponent has creatures in play, then use the edict mode on your turn.

It's also not out of the question to main-phase this in the ultra late game. Similarly to something like a topdecked Inscription of Ruin when you have eight lands in play, this should set up a pretty explosive turn to try and turn the corner.

In Pioneer, as I've mentioned before, the metagame is combo-heavy, which rewards having the right sideboard card at the right time, and therefore digging for those specific cards becomes very useful. Courser of Kruphix, Grim Flayer, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, all these cards get much better when you're not just gaining an extra card here or there or ditching lands and finding action, but you're getting one card closer to your Damping Sphere or Culling Ritual or whatever to put the game out of reach. Riveteers Charm adds just a little bit of extra juice to your sideboard and allows you to lean into the knockout-blow kinds of cards over the general purpose cards, because you're more likely to find them when you need them.

My way too early diagnosis on this card is that you're going to want to play two or three copies in Pioneer and Historic, probably a four of in Standard if a Jund deck is viable there, and I even have a little optimism for it in Modern as a flex slot. The Light up the Stage effect has a pedigree for being strong enough in powerful formats, as Expressive Iteration has shown us. The older the format, the more value an extra card has, and the more likely you are to be able to cast the stuff you hit because it's cheaper. Plus, a Tormod's Crypt can actually steal a game in Pioneer and Modern from time to time, whereas in Standard this is almost always going to be a removal spell or a draw spell, which is totally fine with that power level. All in all, I think this is about the same power level as the Obscura and Maestros Charms, and possibly even better. It feels like the kind of card that's going to take some practice to play correctly and some reps to tune a deck around, but I'm optimistic.

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Still a long ways to go before we actually get to play with this, so I'll be continuing to play the Pioneer Challenges every weekend. My first run was a 10th place finish, but this weekend I bombed out pretty severely. I've been toying with a Jund version of the deck that has Fable of the Mirror Breaker and it's been impressive so far, so maybe I'll try that this weekend if I can tune it up during the week here. I'll see you then, thanks for reading.