This is probably the first set in a while without a single tri colored card. Granted, it still has a five colored card, but well the last time this was the case was back when Atraxa took this slot, or you can go deeper back to Innistrad. That should tells you something. This set is really not focused on multicolored cards, despite not even having an explicit mechanic to favor monocolored cards.

2.1 Mythics

Each monocolor gets three cards, one of them the aforementioned planets, there is Sami as the sole multicolored card, and there are four colorless cards.

The two monocolored spells per color see one take on a more unique mechanic, namely two 2 warp 5 mana 4 power flying creatures, a character with void, another character that grants stuff warp and lastly a big creature that devours land to do a probable Scapeshift. The other card use more normal words, and preferably less of them, like a white version of Cori Steel Cutter, lacking flurry and two keywords but still, woman!, blue card is a weird mix of Timetwister and Omniscience, with an artwork that suggests this is how to get those Esper level tiny waists (which Tezzeret has since rejected), the black hole that’s the center of this planets system (it’s not a Planet probably for color balance, sigh), and lastly two cads that scale in such Gruul ways I don’t have to explain further.

Sami is now a big attacker that grants affinity for artifacts, that’s surely a way for someone to take 1 second to think wow I should build voltron. Colorless has two aforementioned commanders, and two legendary artifacts. One lets you mindslave with help of a big creature, the other tries to not make your game end despite the card name being the “Endstone”.

2.2 Rares

For the longest time I was expecting 8 cards for each monocolor. How wrong am I? Very wrong, white has 9, Rakdos divides to 8, Simic divides to 7, and truly I don’t see any other place in this set that can explain this imbalance. The mutlicolor parts are reasonable I guess, so it’s on the artifacts to explain the monocolored imbalance, I think.

I was thinking about how to describe the monocolored mess with its cycles, and then I drew this map of how the different cycles and then card types intersect. Which really proves how many overlaps are there between all the different units. Basically, the most perplexing thing to point out here are those 4 auras. They’re all one devotion, enchanting some allied thing, artifact or creature or both, two have removals upon arrival, all four obviously offer value over time, I think maybe that’s where the similarities end. The rest are so wonky I don’t feel like pointing out, or I have in their respective mechanics’ sections.

or are there really 4 auras?

Onto the bicoloreds, after the four commanders, there are the other stuffs that can’t be your commander. Three are sorceries about board wipe, or mill, or both, they take three allied pairs in a row. Then three green pairs take 2 drops with 2 types each, two of them are 1/3 insects. All in all, Jund and Sultai are unfortunate to be stuck in here and there’s a loop lacking white.

Lastly, there are the colorless cards. There’s an even split of Spacecrafts (I count the 5C one here) and things that aren’t. Let’s talk about the latter. First off, we get a land that basically has two utilities, one is a way to enlist artifacts, and the other is a power crept Urza’s Factory (did you know that card exists?). The other two cards refers to two kindreds that is thankfully not overrunning this set. They’re apparently just there to imply that this outer space have such thing in case a return happen.

Let’s whine about the Sliver artifact. Specifically, why does it exist like this? For the longest time, the vast majority of Sliver synergy pieces are the Slivers themselves, plus like a total of 6 cards that even mention them, and they try their damndest to just nudge you in, not directly interfere with the hivemind. That all changes with this artifact. I mean, if you think about the actual context of playing this card without knowing all the other one, it is a 6 mana artifact that makes 2 hasty double striker each turns which in turn make the next copy of this thing easier to cast (since keywords from that new one won’t stack), fine, let that exist. But you know what, maybe 3 different abilities on a Sliver themed card seems… a bit much. Another element to the Slivers is that their synergy pieces plug in as simply as possible, not this convoluted. I guess the space slivers can be more wordy, this is what it's hinting right?

2.2.1 Shock lands

There’s a timeline where that fourth Ravnica visit did brought back the shock lands. There’s another timeline where RTR wouldn’t need the shock lands because some sets right before it would carry the burden. But well, we are in this timeline, where the first proper reprint of shock lands are in this set that is on the verge (why don’t we complete this cycle instead) of standard sets’ release structure being changed to this horrific mess.

Which is to say, after this set giving these five shock lands, which one should give the other five? I hope it isn’t either of the UB sets, because those packs will certainly be overpriced so there would be a price difference different the different cards. I hope it isn’t Lorwyn that got delayed, because it got delayed into the next year, right where the cutoff for a different standard year is now. I hope it isn’t a pack of 5 basic lands with a chance for shock lands, sold for almost the price of a normal play booster, that could actually happen now I overthink it.

All in all, all along if we knew of this mess, the first half of the shocks should have already existed in Tarkir. Or just put all 10 into Final Fantasy so all those waifu hunters will just dump them on mass.

Well, one thing that don’t help to the mess is the color pairs chosen for these shock lands. Unlike the typical allied enemy split, this time we go for literally Gatecrash’s 5 color balanced pairs, 2 of which allied and 3 of which enemy. Which honestly makes that other five question way harder, like what’s Lorwyn without Dimir Faeries or Boros Giants, what’s Strixhaven with allied pairs and don’t even get me started on the UB sets because I just don’t know. Frankly, the most reasonable explanation is that they probably relied on the character cast to pick these pairs. Namely, Alpharael is Dimir, Tannuk is Gruul, Vondam is Orzhov and Sami is Boros, and well Simic is added in to at least make a loop before I go insane about color imbalance. Granted, there are characters in other color combinations too, but well maybe they aren’t as important, certainly more important than those last sets, but still.

I will not waste your time to explain for the 10th time what a shockland is, so let’s get to the spacy flavor. Art wise, each are done by a different artist and they certainly have very spacey ways of conveying the two colors. Planets are present in the two opposite pairs of Gruul and Orzhov, one being a reasonable size at the center and the other giganticly off to the side. The three non-white lands features lots of spaceships in the sky, all leaving trails of colors not too related to the land so they stands out. The two red lands go for lavafalls I feel, with the other color more to provide the top layer of the mountain shape terrain. The three other lands are well, water bodies with tall things breaking through.

The flavor text, which is the part I’m the most infuriated with dual lands not all being in the same set, feature the “Maisie’s Edge Chronicles” which put a name of a moon or planet to each of these lands. They’re all two different sentences, explicitly mentioning the word “moon” in those spaceships heavy arts, not putting the moon name at the beginning in the Gruul land, ending in the exclaimation mark in any non-black lands.