4. Commander set

This is weakest aspect of this set, just a heads up. These cards may be giving us a glimpse of the alternative timeline where this set turned out just alright and not the monumental piece it is.

4.1. Color selection: Iffy replacement for a Werewolf deck

Coming off Innistrad Double Feature, where they decided against doing a Werewolf deck due to DFCs not being feasible in a precon, it’s decided that this set will carry the duty. And it got the archetype of modified handy. Which eventually goes for more of the traditional side, so it makes the choice of theme for the other deck obvious: Let’s go for the future, the mech suits, the… Azorius we’ve already done in Crimson Vow. Then again, I doubt alternatives like an enemy pair or a wedge would feels any less infuriating. Actually, three of the five enemy archetypes sound pretty tough to make precons of.

The correct solution would have been to force Innistrad to get all of the 5 allied pairs, then maybe either have this set do nothing or split the enemy pairs with let’s say… Baldur’s Gate. If you want these decks to actually be good however, maybe go for something like Ninjas vs. Enchantress, but then you run into the problem of literally copying Midnight Hunt. Actually, WotC designers had thought about a Ninja deck, but as a pity support for the kindred in case the draft set can’t provide any. That would indeed not be a good timeline.

Let’s now look at what commanders you get in these decks. For one, they all cost 4 mana except for one, and it’s the simplest card of this bunch. The main commanders both are normal humanoid beings with two abilities: One that namedrops the theme of the deck, and the other being a once per turn buff that have a wider target pool. The backup commanders are more abstract beings: one is a mass goader, the other is a Vehicle commander way before all the others get on the fun too. This one is a tome in the time you find the creatures to crew it, netting 1 card and a token certainly sounds like the commander power twist here.

4.2. Rares

Each deck gets 13 rares, divided to be 6 cards per color plus one monocolored commander, this is how Midnight Hunt did it and not Crimson Vow. These commanders are Green and Blue respectively, and they have quite the overlap: The artificer gives +1/+1 counters while the samurai obviously likes Equipments and draw cards the curious way. The latter’s strangest thing is that it also damages opponents, like a Red card. Are we robbed of a third commander for these decks? That could be a case for the blue one too, flying and support is totally White too. What else does each deck have?

• Vehicles: Each color gets one to observe opponents. Each color also get one instant that creates 1/1 and one sorcery with improvise. White has the rest being more varied, while Blue hass three artifact creatures with one being quite infamous for also having improvise and more importantly, ward 4 and unblockable and scales infinitely.
• Modified: Each color gets one Reconfigurer, we know that much from above. They also have an Aura that have an X scaling ability and a death trigger. Lastly, each color has an even split of prowesses and creatures, one of the former from each side also have X scaling, while for the creatures it’s that split of humanoids and abstracts once again.

Each deck also has a new artwork of their respective Odyssey filter land, this was quite a new and novel thing back then. The Modified deck does get more new arts, three green cards that likes their swirly lifeforms to be specific. At the cost of having that new art land eating a Nissa Who Shakes the World, which renders the deck illegal. The card database render does exist, her token actually gets printed in the deck, just that the lesbian woman isn’t here. Meanwhile, the other deck has a Jace, a bad one. Just replace the dupe with a Forest, they said. I guess.

I feel like these decks would have benefited from the $20 precon format that just got killed pretty close to this set. (I was tempted to joke about how they picked the two weakest archetypes from this set, then I actually look up at their winrates and truth be told, Gruul is bad, Azorius isn’t but scroll down for the Vehicles do reveal the truth.)

4.3. Set booster exclusives

The structure of this subset is much the same compared to the Innistrad block.

• Mythics: The mono white card is now a loyal dog to someone so it has partner, and also grows alongside your legend board width, so it can easily beat the 1 mana 2/2 original Kamigawa made a big fuss about. Ultimately, the more infamous commander here is this mono green one that’s actually 5 colors. It needed that because it’s a Shrine commander, that now looking back, works more like the Shrines in TLA than the Kamigawa value engine Shrines we’re used to. For… Shrine tokens, what a hideous thing that even WotC knows it’s hideous so they underprint the official token. But oh wait, Sliver Queen just makes the tokens without contributing too, why don’t you hate that too? Well, that’s where the top ability comes, reanimating enchantments, of all things. The first two Shrine cycles don’t innately dies. This set’s cycle, maybe, but they are never known to be the best attackers, so you should be responsible in the case they dies. Ultimately, the Slivers would receive their really cynical synergy piece eventually, and the Shrines will get another green but 5 colors commander too.
• Rares: The cycle this time are five Myojin of <Adjective> <Noun>, five Spirit commanders that are a homage to the original Kamigawa cycle. Ironically, for once, we got a remade cycle that shares the same mana value in face of the original cycle’s variance, but well the more important element is the triple devotion. The original cycle had a divinity counter on them that gets them indestructible through a separate ability, now the new cycle just has an indestructible counter, what a streamline. This counter is meant to basically be these cards’ exhaust ability. It better be something impactful:
  • White: This feels like the mono white meme when compared to the original blue one.
  • Black: This is the reanimate version of the original green one, but now we need a restriction.
  • Temur trio: Unlike four of the original cycle just doing something on everything in the criteria for that maximum impact points, here we get fixed numbers: 3, 7 and 8. Oh well, this is the second cycle, and boardwipes or emptying everyone’s hands doesn’t sound all that fun.

Flavor wise, instead of one artist carrying the whole cycle so you just get sky for the background, now we have the Azorius pair sharing the same artist, then the Rakdos pair sharing another artist and one last artist for the Green one.

Lastly, we have our pity card for Black: An exploiter that gives Treasures. This feels like an omen for the next set.

5. Alchemy set

The awful rarity formation continues for this last set. I hope we don’t force everything to just be a Human or have to use other planes’ ideas for this one.

• Mythics: Red has a Reconfigurer, Black has a drawback creature, and the Bant trio gets something quite cynical to say the least: a 4 mana 2/2 creature (or 2/3 in one case) that does a very normal thing, just so happen that they can cost 2 if you ran out of cards of a specific type in your hand, in paper you probably would need to reveal your hand to get the discount but here you don’t need to. The green one sounds the cruelest, like a 2 lander hand is totally common and sequencing that to play this to get a ramp sounds wrong. The others make a better case for the “intended purpose” of these cards being “the one you play last” in hellbent, straight up not being good if you go about the cheaty way and not run a single card of those types in your deck (admitted Alchemy can conjure cards to make that dream possible).