Once again, we're back to discuss the Rare cards of LCI. After this we will talk about any Commons and Uncommons I feel are significant to our format, and that'll be that... Oh, well, wait. I guess there's also the LCI Commander stuff to talk about to!
EDIT: Okay so I had planned on doing on further post to talk about Commons and Uncommons from the main set, but after looking over the spoiler there were just so few cards that I felt worth mentioning that it didn't seem worth doing a post for like 2 or 3 cards that weren't all that exciting anyway, so consider this the final piece of the main set, and after this we'll go straight on to the Commander cards.
Okay then, on with the show.
Oh, cool, a new toughness matters card. Probably great for Arcades/Ikra/Doran players and not much else? Then again it's sort of a 6/6 semi-hexproof for 4 mana so it might see a tiny bit of play elsewhere.
A new confluence, but this one is kinda hyper-focused, so I don't expect this one to see much play. Are Caves going to be the new Gates? Doubt it.
Wow, okay, solid Dino-based ramp at a low enough spot on the curve to matter (for Dino decks, anyway). Seems well positioned to be a critical piece of ramp for the Zacamas and Gishaths of the world. I'd probably be willing to play this in Yorvo, even.
More Dino-centric ramp, but mostly I just see another 2-drop dork for Etali decks on Arena. Ugh. The possibility to recurs your dead dinos is nice, but realistically I think it's a bit slow and durdly to be all that reliable. Oh, also I will take this moment to say I loathe Finality Counters.
Amusing, but probably not terribly efficient. I mean, yeah, you'll probably just go ahead and play it in your Simic Merfolk decks, but then you probably just try to play it out on curve for like 2-3 mana tops. Fine, but whatever.
BONK
3/4 Vigilance for 3 is quite nice, and the Map tokens are certainly not irrelevant. Should be a slam dunk for Simic Merfolk, much more so than the Spelunker above. Another one I might even find room for in Yorvo, just due to the solid cost/stat rate.
This is to Brago what Vito is to Teysa. Meaning, your poor friends are traumatized by your Brago deck, but you still wanna do Brago things. This should soften the blow, right? In all seriousness, this seems significantly worse than Brago, yet still capable of being annoying. Annoying, but not traumatically so. I actually wish he did something else, like make a 1/1 Spirit token when a card enters the battlefield from Exile or something like that. Kinda dull, as he is.
Yikes. With this spiritual successor to Karlov of the Ghost Council, I'm not sure which one is actually better. Either way, this is easily the most exciting Orzhov commander I've seen since, well, Uncle Karl himself.
Karl is probably better at playing a more grindy, controlling game, and his ability to exile things is certainly more widely useful than Amalia's board wipe ability, but this thing can more easily pop off and one-shot someone out of nowhere.
Not really feeling this one. Don't have much to say about it, just doesn't pique my interest at all.
Good Lord, they are really committed to making me like Vehicles for some reason. And it seems to be working. I mainly just look at this and see a card for Jhoira (Weatherlight Captain, obvs). But it has a lot of potential for other use cases, I'm sure.
We've come a loooong way from Vesuvan Doppelganger (a fact that makes me a little sad, as for many years, Vesuvan Doppelganger was one of my absolute favorite Magic cards ever, but now it's barely even playable, outside of like Clone Tribal decks). A 4/4 for four that Explores every turn is already decent, but add that it can selectively copy something else if there is something worth cloning and now it really has potential. Very solid.
Hmm. I really don't know what you do with this in EDH. Seems very much like a Standard card to me. Not an interesting commander, and I don't see it doing all that much in the 99. Just sort of okay, I guess.
So, basically this is a Dreadbore that, if you cracked a fetchland, can also hit a Sol Ring? I guess if you're still running Dreadbore this is stricly better like 1% of the time. Still worth making the upgrade if you have it, because that rare instance where it does 2 for 1 is probably going to be big swing for you. But it still requires a lot of specific conditions to be that good.
At first I thought this would be a great fit for Atla Palani (it even references her in the name) but the fact that it forces you to sac your Eggs might actually make it a liability moreso than an asset. That said, you can cast this post-Combat so you at least have some time before the first sacrifice happens. Also, Atla decks that only run like 3 big Eldrazi or whatever won't want to dilute their creatures with a whimpy 5/3. Yeah this one seems like it has a few things working against it, but I'm sure it'll get played in "fair" Atla decks regardless.
Shit, that's quite interesting. Probably my Golgari bias is showing but I really like this. At first I thought it was only so-so, but then I realized that it doesn't say "creature" it says "nonland permanent" so it hits Enchantments, Artifacts, Planeswalkers, and whatever else I may be forgetting. Battles, I guess? So it's actually quite versatile despite the
Fathomless Descent restriction placed upon it. Self mill decks likely find it trivially easy to work around. Sidisi, Gitrog, Meren, etc. will probably be thrilled to have this.
Another potential Dimir/Sultai self-mill card, but it's not wildly powerful or exciting, just some solid card advantage. It's not bad, but far from a must-run even in those self-mill strategies.
Three mana for a looter is kinda underwhelming, but it helps set up the flip condition of course. Even better you basically get your 4 mana investment back immediately upon transforming. I think this might be solid in mono-color decks, mainly. I would 100% run this is Feldon of the Third Path, for instance.
Generic "choose a tribe" tribal card. Probably not as good as just running Panharmonicon but solid stat/cost rate and Ward 2 might make this worth running as a redundancy that attacks and blocks.
This is mostly very underwhelming, but it is worth noting that sacrificing a bunch of treasure tokens can power this up very rapidly. Still pretty mid, though.
LOL this looks like a jank rare straight out of the original Mirrodin block or something. Seven mana for a 3/3 that isn't Meteor Golem seems wildly hard to justify even with all its other text. Matches up poorly to Myr Battlesphere. I have a hard time envisioning where this might actually be worth playing. Casual Brudiclad maybe?
I don't even know, man. I mean, yeah, you can cheat this with some Changelings, but do you just slot this into whatever deck you already happened to have some changelings in? Does the self-mill portion matter to that deck? I guess maybe it could work in certain Horde of Notions lists. I guess.
Fine card for Gitrog.
Cool cycle. Dual manlands are neat.
This one is objectively the best because it turns into a Llama. Not open to discussion.
Shark is also a very powerful creature type. My Wrexial deck circa 2011 would have
killed to have this card.
Probably my least favorite of the cycle, but still good. Would definitely run this in Stonebrow.
Insect is kind of a strange choice of creature type here, but fine. Menace, plus the solid attack trigger makes this quite appealing.
And this helps you activate your manlands, I guess. Probably not running it just for that purpose. Probably not a great card in EDH, to be honest, unless you just have a shit ton of utility lands for some reason. Yeah,
very niche, at best. Probably just straight up useless.
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