Welcome back to the Guilds of Ravnica EDH set review, part two. This time we're taking a look at the White, Blue and Black cards of the set. This will be longer than the last one, by quite a wide margin, so let's just jump right in.
This has "token deck staple" written all over it. Sure, to some folks it is just a five mana do-nothing or win-more, but I think that's a narrow view. There are a lot of decks that are good at cranking one 1/1 tokens, but in EDH, you need a LOT of 1/1's to make a credible threat - but it takes far fewer 4/4 Angels to have a legit impact. For most token decks, this should be up there with Doubling Season and Cathars' Crusade as high-priority enchantments - the only real issue is that the 5-mana slot is become quite crowded with these sorts of effects. Still, if you are playing tokens and finding yourself with an army of 1/1's that just gets outclassed and unable to properly get through, try this out.
Kinda wish this could hit Planeswalkers, but perhaps that is only because the last Commander set had Planeswalker commanders. Anyway, this is a solid bit of removal, but sadly it is a white card, and white has plenty of solid removal already. Where this does possibly shine is in something like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death - but that it only targets legendary permanents will always be a big damper on it's performance. I think this is a highly niche card at best.
Fantastic card! White card draw is a rarity, and we'll take all we can get ,so long as it isn't Armistice levels of terrible. While this can be a tad pricey, I'll still happily run it in any W/x deck with a even moderate lifegain package.
Reverse Retribution of the Meek? Cool. Potentially a three-mana Wrath of God? Very cool. I don't think this is anywhere near as good as actual Retribution of the Meek but it can work in a pinch. R.I.P. Arcades and Doran decks, though. :(
I expect this to get played a LOT in the early days after release, but taper off over time, as people realize it's a lot harder to get that one-sided value that you can often get via Retribution.
Intro deck rare incoming! This is pretty bad, but it's an Angel and has some really sweet art, so it gets played anyway, here and there.
This I actually like. There are for sure decks out there that want all the "put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control" effects they can get. Historically, those effects have been rather expensive, mana-wise. But lately, WotC seems to be pushing the effect a bit, making them cheaper to cast. Since this one is potentially FREE, it's going to be hard to beat. Plus it's on a body, not a spell, so easier to blink/recur for more value!
Wow, solid uncommon utility spell! Not something we get a ton of these days, so I'm happy to see it. This clearly competes with Return to Dust, which is a bona fide staple. Thing is, I think this is as good or better roughly half the time, and only marginally worse the other half.
One place I think this card actually beats out Return to Dust is in W/U decks that are heavily geared toward playing at Instant speed - you almost always wind up casting Return as a sorcery to get full value, but this you can always cast as an Instant and not lose out.
If you see a lot of decks that are very heavy one of the two permanent types you probably still want Return (or both!), but otherwise, I think this is a tiny bit better.
The thing that's going to kill this is that CMC. Otherwise, there's a lot to love about this Nightmare Sphinx. It doesn't have the best stats, P/T-wise but Flash, Flying and those ETBF triggers are all very sweet.
I think the main factor that will determine how playable this is to you is how much you value the Surveil 4. If that's just incidental value, then this might be just a hair overcosted. But if your deck can make serious use of that Surveil effect, then you can probably justify the expense.
Also, that art... *shudders*
Oh, I get it, it's basically Elvish Piper for spells! Neat. No one plays Piper anymore though. Still, this is probably better, but all anyone is ever going to do with this is cheese shit like Expropriate - and there are better ways to do that already - Jodah, Fist of Suns, Narset.
Still, in this format, if there's a way to get a six-mana discount on your nine-mana spells, someone is going to take that offer. Plus he's a wizard, so tribal synergies likely count for something.
Oh wow, nice. At worst this is just a budget replacement for Snapcaster Mage. But in some decks this could be even better. You're trading in the 2/1 body for Surveil 2. In EDH, I think Surveil 2 is likely to be better than a Savannah Lion more often than not. Still, just having a surprise chump-blocker is sometimes useful, so Snapcaster will still win out in some decks.
Oh, and one other thing - Snapcaster won't let you overload that Cyclonic Rift in your graveyard... this will.
Well it's a three mana clone, with sorta-flashback, so that's cool. But it restricts targets to creatures you control, so no copying your opponents' stuff. I think more often than not, that restriction is enough to outweigh the things in the Pro column.
Perhaps a more suitable analogue would be Cackling Counterpart. I have absolutely made good use of Cackling Counterpart before, and in the right decks, it's actually pretty great.
The key difference here is, Counterpart is an Instant; this ain't. So, once again, this seems good but falls short of existing options.
I don't get why this is rare - these effects are pretty much always common or uncommon. And it's not even the most powerful version of this effect. But if you have a deck with Sphinx's Tutelage and Jace's Erasure... here's one more for ya!
Seems playable in like a hypothetical rogue tribal (we'll get there eventually, if they keep printing the odd one here and there). Maybe non-cutthroat Edric decks too.
And to wrap up the Blue cards, a laughably bad Talrand impersonator... that will still get played in Izzet decks that already run Talrand and Young Pyro.
Okay, yeah so that's a mythic. 6/6 Flying and Trample for 5 mana is already a solid threat. The activated ability is the real goods, though. There are a lot of graveyard oriented decks in EDH and this is powerful fuel for many of them.
Even if you're not getting back the most exciting things, this is still pretty good value. But on the other hand, Living Death exists.
The dream of course is to use Buried Alive to set up some ideal trio of creatures that for a combo or at least a powerful synergy but I'm still having a hard time coming up with scenarios where Living Death doesn't just do the same thing, but better.
Possible budget tutor option for graveyard decks? It's not great but it's definitely playable.
Ouch, this is strictly worse than Grim Haruspex by a pretty wide margin. I guess you might still pick this for a zombie tribal deck, but you wouldn't be happy about it.
Hell it's also pretty much objectively worse than Dark Prophecy; as an enchantment, Dark Prophecy is less vulnerable to removal, and it doesn't have the "nontoken" restriction.
Another weird sweeper. Huh. Pretty bad for EDH as the vast majority of creatures with a CMC of three or less tend to be relatively non-threatening utility dorks. It's certainly meta-dependent though. If you see a lot of low-to-the-ground aggro decks like Alesha or whatnot, you will definitely want to give this a shot.
Cool name, but not a great card. The primary issue is, of course, there not being nearly enough cards with Surveil to make this viable in a 100-card singleton format. Plus, a 3/1 lifelinker isn't all that exciting or relevant once you do buy him back. Hard pass, even in a vampire tribal deck.
Possible finisher for Dredge decks, or just a worse Gray Merchant for Meren? You decide.
OH HOLY SHIT, YES!!!
Fleshbag Marauder just got a serious upgrade and I cannot be more happy! My only hope is that the do for this guy what they did for Fleshbag - i.e., make functional reprints with different names and, sometimes, slightly different stats, so we can effectively run 3 or 4 of these.
This is easily the best uncommon in the set, and puts a number of rares to shame.
And here we have one of the only commons in the set worth mentioning. This probably isn't even that good, but I'm still quite excited by this. In 60-card, 1v1 Magic, I have, over many years, gotten a TON of mileage out of Ravenous Rats - in fact, Ravenous Rats was easily my favorite common creature of all time, until they printed Mulldrifter.
I've always been a little sad that Ravenous Rats is just straight garbage in EDH, especially multiplayer FFA games. This... well.. this probably isn't very good either, really. But if you are looking for more discard effects that say "each opponent..." rather than "target opponent...", well, here ya go.
And that about does it for this one, folks. I'm digging this set quite a bit, but at the same time I can't help but feel like they're pulling their punches just a bit. Dominaria was always going to be a very tough act to follow for our crowd, but I figured if any plane could deliver a set to rival it, it would be Ravnica. But we haven't gotten to the multicolor stuff yet - hopefully that's where we'll see this set really shine.
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