March of the Machine spoilers are up, and there are a few cards to go over. Admittedly, since the baby was born I haven't had a ton of time to play. It feels like Brother's War just came out, and that was two sets ago now. But, this set has a lot of stuff that if not powerful, or that good, is at least intriguing. And wordy.
In Explorer, this excites me a lot as far as the battles go. The reason is that the front side is a solid enough card by itself. I don't think we would play Cruel Edict if given the chance, or Cruel Edict plus Planeswalkers. Jund in Explorer, though, is in the market for everything going on here. We want a removal spell, we want it to be versatile, we are okay with trading damage for a little card advantage, and we're into having a cheap creature that's small enough that you don't have to put a lot of resources into it but big enough that you can't exactly ignore it. Ashen Reaper is a real enough threat if it stays on the board long enough. The reason that this battle in particular seems good to me, in Explorer Jund, is that we might be on board for a free creature if we gift our opponent four life, we also might not be depending on the context of the game, and Invasion of Azgol lets you decide that for yourself. You've got the removal spell part of the card done, which is a perfectly fine outcome, you can try to get the full value if you want, or you might choose not to.
Battles seem like they are going to be hit or miss, since what the card does has a lot to do with how it's going to play out. I remember when Lorwyn came out and the debate about whether Planeswalkers were good or not, and it turns out that they are all contextual. Similarly to Planeswalkers, what makes them hard to evaluate is the amount of options they give you, not just the abilities written on the card, but the plays you make in-game to protect a planeswalker or to flip a battle.
You also want to have flipping battles in mind when you construct your deck, both for yourself and your opponent. In order to maximize Invasion of Azgol, or maybe to give ourselves the most options, creatures that can flip it by themselves turn into a priority. New Explorer addition Grim Flayer comes to mind, as does Voltaic Brawler, Bonecrusher Giant, Migloz, Sheoldred, stuff like that. Also stuff like Kolaghan's Command and Stomp can finish off an Invasion of Azgol that a Kiki Jiki token or an early Evolved Sleeper got a hit on. A huge Package Theory situation. Also, we want to keep the board clear to avoid our opponents being able to cast a battle and flip it on us, so cheap removal and being up-tempo might be critical in the coming format, if more battles become popular.
Finally, what's nice about Invasion of Azgol, and why not only do I like it but I like it as a four-of, is that it works so well with itself. Invasion's trigger can remove a blocker, allowing you to get in and flip the battle. Ashen Reaper is a creature that itself can quickly get up to four power and has evasion, so it's excellent at flipping future drawn copies of Invasion of Azgol. I think initially I'm going to play four copies of this to try it out.
Similarly to that last thought on Invasion of Azgol, Kyren Flamewright looks like it's really good at flipping battles as well, if we're going to go down that road. It also is a nice synergy piece with Grim Flayer, in that it helps get delirium both by being another card type and by filling the yard, so there might be something there. If you want to just be The Battle Deck, this card is probably in there.
Out of the battles, this is the only other one that looks appealing to me in Explorer Jund. It's definitely more of a setup-payoff kind of card than Invasion of Azgol, becuase four mana Murder is just not good enough. Also, the difference between needing five damage and four is huge, especially if you're planning on having four-power creatures to flip your other battles. The flipped card is just a monster, though. It's like Esika's Chariot plus a mana sink plus a removal spell and incidental graveyard hate. I'm not sure how consistently this can go off, but if it's consistent at all, it seems like a powerful top end for Explorer.
I don't have super duper high hopes for Deeproot Wayfiner, and a lot of that is because it probably doesn't go in the Invasion of Azgol deck, but this thing is solid, especially in a deck that incidentally puts lands into the bin. And by solid, like, I mean, one hit with this on turn three is going to be winning games fairly often, not immediately but down the road. And while it's not especially good at flipping battles, it does trigger even if you're attacking one, and is a cheap creature that wants to be played alongside cheap removal, just like battles would like you to do. Not sure it will make any decklist in Explorer, but I'm eager to try it, if only because I think it's been criticized quite a bit by some notable people. Or maybe those people are right and I just can't get over my disbelief that a card this pushed isn't good. Either way, worth a shot.
I don't think this is good enough for Explorer, but what's worth focusing on isn't the abilities, necessarily, it's the numbers. This card has (pretty much) the same play pattern as Jace, Architect of Thought. Four loyalty, +1 to play some defense, -2 to gain some value. You start by using the -2, if it survives until your next turn, you +1 and spend your turn setting up to defend it, then you -2 again the next turn for more value, rinse and repeat one time and you've drawn three cards and played some defense and fixed your mana. A planeswalker that has +1 defend itself and -2 gain a semi-large piece of value turns out to work nicely. I'm just not sure that a card like this that doesn't put anything tangible on the board the turn it enters play is good enough to see play. Three mana, four loyalty, +1, -2, those are the things I like about this card, the actual ability effects are just probably not going to be useful enough.
A pretty good removal spell. Compare to something like Vraska's Contempt and Eat to Extinction, and it's a little bit worse at face value because of "destroy" vs "exile", but okay. This will probably work nicely if you're expecting to be blocking, where you can use the convoke after blockers and before damage on their biggest unblocked creature. Surveil 2 is no joke. It looks great if you can depend on having creatures in play to convoke it, Explorer Jund kind of can't.
Every once in a while I try and go way up the mana curve for a sideboard midrange hammer card. Usually that means something like Casualties of War or Chandra, Awakened Inferno. In Jegantha decks it's usually Garruk, Cursed Huntsman. Kogla and Yidaro could take that spot in a non-Jegantha deck. 7/7 Nekrataal is pretty nice, as is just trample and haste to either go face or hit a planeswalker (or battle). But the backup ability of being an uncounterable Slice in Twain is really nice too. Lots of the decks you'll want to bring this in for will have incidental stuff it can hit, like Fable of course, but also Portable Hole, Leyline Binding, stuff like that, not to mention the Enigmatic Incarnation deck. I've actually like Jegantha lately, and six mana hammers aren't always the thing to be doing, but it could be worth a shot in specific instances. I don't think it's the most powerful card for that slot, but it might be the one that gives you the most options while still being very powerful.
So you've probably heard that the trick with Invasion of Ikoria is that in Modern (or Legacy I guess), you can cast it for 2 and go fetch Vampire Hexmage and get a Thorn Elemental. Seems cool, but is four mana Thorn Elemental really that good? Well, yeah it kind of is. Murktide Regent isn't that powerful of a card compared to Ulamog and Primeval Titan and Ad Nauseam and whatever, but the reason it's good is that it goes in a deck that is just playing a normal game until you cast it. This combo is the same way, you can just cast Thoughtseizes and Fatal Pushes and Tarmogoyfs and then when you hit four mana, you get Thorn Elemental. Also, note how it makes all your creatures Thorn Elemental too, so it busts through a board stall if you have a couple of Goyfs in play holding down the fort.
What makes it most exciting to me is that plan A of flipping the battle is solid enough, but you've got a ton of cool plays you can make with the Invasion to fetch up silver bullets, and in Modern that's a big deal. Finale of Devastation doesn't make your Jund deck in Modern just to fetch Collector Ouphe, but if you could just cast it for X=2 and get 8/8 reach unblockable, it probably would. Even just fetching a Tarmogoyf and having the battle later to flip can work out. A singleton Dryad Arbor can turn a double Invasion hand into a turn three Zilortha fairly easily, and there are plenty of awesome hate piece creatures you can put singles of in your board and have five copies when the time is right. Maybe play one Godless Shrine and then stuff like Gaddock Teeg, Leonin Arbiter, whatever else you might want. Plus if you draw the Hexmage, it's not like it's that bad of a card. I think it's the closest thing Jund is going to get to Natural Order in Modern, which is to say, the ability to do something a little beyond fair Magic, something that's maybe not on-theme but isn't specifically off-theme and adds an extra element to the deck.
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So there's that. My two cards I'm most excited about are Invasion of Azgol in Explorer and Invasion of Ikoria in Modern. I'm finding that it's not that feasible to climb the ladder with a two month old in the house, since it's hard to have a win rate that can overcome having to close the program and go put out a fire or whatever every few games. But I'll get some games in and come back with a list at some point for Explorer, and maybe the same in Modern. Thanks for reading.
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