Well folks, it's been a while but we're going to try to get through a new EDH set review, this time for Lost Caverns of Ixalan. The original Ixalan block should have been a bigger hit with me, as the setting for it hits all the right notes. Pirates, Vampires, Dinosaurs, Merfolk and more, all wrapped up in an Aztec-flavored aesthetic. I honestly think it succeeds far better than settings such as Amonkhet and Kaladesh at "Magic-ifying" the real-world influences it draws upon. The first Ixalan block also seemed to have been in a good place as far as power level goes, with several absolute bangers for the EDH format, but few (if any) overly pushed problematic cards. Even Growing Rites of Itlimoc provided a budget alternative to Gaea's Cradle that is definitely playable, but far from breaking anything. Yet somehow the first block kinda flew under my radar in a lot of ways. I actually play a TON of Ixalan cards in Historic Brawl on Arena - stuff like River's Rebuke, Settle the Wreckage, Tendershoot Dryad and many others, but I'm always mildly surprised when I realize one of these cards was from an Ixalan set. Like, going back to the XLN and RIX set spoilers NOW and looking back, yeah I see a TON of cards I'm either playing or would like to be if I had them. And yet, somehow, I just never seemed to have noticed all those Ixalan cards creeping into lists and quietly becoming staples.
No matter! We're here today to hopefully prevent this new Ixalan set from sneaking past us this time.
So for the first part of this review instead of just going by color and starting with White, I think we'll just take a look at the Mythic Rares of the set. And in particular we'll start by looking at the new cycle of Gods.
So, essentially each one of these gods is a mono-colored creature with some splashy effect, and when it dies, it transforms into a land. The land comes into play untapped and taps for the appropriate color. The land side has no further special abilities except the one that transforms it back into the god side, once some small condition has been met.
Assuming we're considering these as commanders first and foremost the big question is, how often is it better to just command zone your god when it dies rather than let it become a land and hope you can meet the condition to flip it? The requirements aren't terribly stringent and tend to play into what the God itself does - for example, the white one triples you token production effects so it assumes you should have 3 expendable dorks to attack with to flip the land back into a god. Probably very doable, too, unless the god happened to die to a board wipe... then maybe you wanna think about just command zoning it.
But thinking about it further, how valuable IS the ability to skirt commander tax in this fashion? I'm not certain, but it doesn't feel like a deciding factor to me. I think the better way to evaluate these is to mainly ignore the whole DFC land-flipping aspect and weigh them solely on their front side effects and consider the potential of flipping them into a land and then right back to a god again as added value. Something you don't take into account in the initial evaluation but is a very nice bonus if it works out for you in actual play. That said, if it turns out that ability actually works more consistently than I assume and these guys turn out to be very annoying to get rid of, then obviously that changes the math significantly.
Of course one other thing to consider is that these are monocolored commanders, which is not nearly as big a handicap as it was back in the day, but it is still absolutely going to impact their popularity and effectiveness to some degree.
But lets go ahead and evaluate them individually as cards now.
Ojer Taq is likely a trap. It's going to stir up some buzz because it triples something we're used to seeing at best doubled. Token decks have long sought to capitalize on cards like Doubling Season and Anointed Procession to really power up their various token-makers. So tripling them instead is just, like, 50% better right? Maybe but not really. The real draw is simply having one of these effects in the command zone. But, while mono-White tokens certainly is a thing you can already do, I'm not convinced tripling vs doubling is all that significant, and also the guy is just MAD expensive at six mana. If this god where Selesnya instead of mono-White I think we might be singing a different tune here, but despite the immediate "wow" factor of seeing something we kinda haven't seen before, this is just going to be an okayish commander.
Ojer Pakpatiq is the blue one and it does blue things. But it does them weirdly. It's mono-Blue and it very clearly wants you to play a ton of Instants (one of the rare cases we have a commander that just specifically wants the Instant card type, but doesn't care one whit about Sorceries). But Rebound is a pretty worthless effect to apply to counterspells - which is basically what most Blue Instants do. Though I should mention it is at least a good deal better with modular "swiss army knife" countermagic like Cryptic Command or Sublime Epiphany, because when the card rebounds on the next turn you can choose modes other than "counter a spell" so it still does something rather than just fizzling. But still the challenge remains of how to build a mono-Blue deck that cares about Instants very specifically but doesn't want just a glut of counterspell knockoffs. Sure you can run some, but you're not getting much value out of your commander that way, so why not just play Baral or something? Personally I'm just not seeing the draw here, but as much as I like Blue, I'm not THAT kind of Blue player, so perhaps I'm missing something.
Aclazot, Deepest Betrayal firstly betrays the established naming convention. I'm sure there's a story-driven reason behind this but as the Magic story, which has always been a bit dodgy at best, has taken multiple nose-dives in quality in recent years, I couldn't be fucked to find out what that reason is. Anyway, as to the card itself, my first impression is that, my God, this thing has a novella in its text box! My second impression is that this is definitely the hardest to flip back into a god once it become a land. Getting players down to one card in EDH is tough, because being hellbent in any format is undesirable but in EDH it is practically a death sentence. So, right off the bat, I'm reasonably certain this is one you will be command zoning when it dies like 90% of the time, at best. Once you fully parse what this guy does, though, he's pretty cool, but not something I would want to build a whole deck around. If this guy was just a non-legendary Vampire (instead of a bat) and was JUST the creature part without the DFC stuff, I'd windmill slam this into Edgar Markov without hesitation. But as cool as it is to have a card with the type "Bat God", this not being a Vampire actually sucks a big one. But, hey, maybe in another 20 years or so Bat Tribal will actually be a viable deck and this guy's day will come!
Ojer Axonil, the red god, seems pretty cool, actually. I'm not sold on it being a "real" deck but I kinda hope to be proven wrong on this one. I'm a fan of WotC's experiments in the area of shoring up Red's biggest weakness in EDH. It's not draw or ramp - no, it's that "Burn" is kinda terrible in EDH. We all know Red mages can count to 20 just fine but asking them to count to 120 is basically just bullying them. I kid, but seriously, filling your deck with Shocks and Lightning Bolts is objectively bad. But WotC seems committed to throwing some experimental designs at this problem and seeing if anything sticks. I don't think they've quite cracked it yet but they've definitely come a long way, so I support them just throwing things like this out and letting us try to make it work. While I'm not convinced this is going to be a big hit in EDH proper, I have a feeling this guy will be quite annoying in Historic Brawl on Arena.
We finish out the cycle with Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth. This guy certainly has that "wow! factor" going on, with a pretty sick combat damage trigger. Potentially cheating out a creature and land simultaneously seems pretty powerful, but the deckbuilding aspect could prove tricky to find the right balance. Otherwise, his 6/5 Trample for five mana is certainly acceptable, but not so over the top. Maybe they just felt they've gotten a bit too comfortable with pushed five-drop 6/6's in recent years, and are taking a tiny step back. Probably a good call, if so. That all said, I think this is another one that I'm sure to see a ton of on Arena, but in paper EDH I think green has maybe too many really pushed commanders now for this to really make a big splash. I also think he is probably going to be the easiest of the cycle to take advantage of his transform ability reliably in EDH, so that might be something to watch out for as well.
Moving on from the gods, we'll look at the rest of the mythic rares.
This is a reprint of course, I just featured it anyway cause I really dig the art.
This is clearly Torbran, Thane of Red Fell reskinned as a black card. See the cost/stat similarities, for instance. Seems like an awesome card to me, but it's sure to be one of those kill-on-sight cards.
I've always liked Mark Zug's illustrations but I am not a fan of this one. Seems like a slam dunk card for Prosper decks, though, so I am quite happy about that.
I honestly have no idea with this one. It's just such a weird card to me that I don't even want to risk an assessment that would essentially be nothing more than a wild-ass guess. I am curious to see, though.
Too long, didn't read. Seriously. The other side is even longer. I can't. Ain't nobody got time for that.
While we will likely be seeing him as commander in Historic Brawl, he is sadly relegated to the 99 in EDH. Shame, because I think he'd be significantly better with the full Commander card pool. As to that, in EDH, I am not sure what archetypes would really want him. He certainly has some synergies with Narset, but I'm not sure those synergies are actually powerful enough to warrant a slot. I'd like to think I'm underestimating him, but right now he just seems "meh".
Kind of an interesting card, and I like that it doesn't force the artifact thing, so it more open-ended how you want to build her. Still, I am unconvinced as to how powerful she might actually be as commander. I kinda feel like I'd rather see her in the 99 of something like Riku of Two Reflections or Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain.
Cat people are always cool, and certainly seem like a good fit for Ixalan. I am starting to feel like they might be overdoing the Ward thing just a teeny, tiny bit. I think it's mainly when it's on commanders that it can get a little tedious. Anyway, it seems fine here, and the card isn't pushed. The wording is a little obtuse, but essentially you play things that are 0/0s and come into play with some counters on them and he doubles them. So, like, Kalonia Hydra, is basically the one card that should be in 99% of Okinec decks.
This guy seems real chill; very humble and down to earth.
While his ability seems interesting, I kinda feel like this is just for people who wanna sneakily play Teysa, Orzhov Scion deck without anyone noticing. Tesya on hard mode.
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