We don’t have a guaranteed slot of anything anymore. Just the wonky SFC/MDFC split of the rare slot still applies. What does the uncommon slot have 20 cards of that could sit in place of a God?
| Set | W | U | B | R | G | C | M | T |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KHM-M | 3 | 3 | 4* | 3 | 4** | 3 | 20 | |
| KHM-R | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 9* | 6* | 16 | 64 |
| KHM-U | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 5 | 30 | 80 |
| KHM-C | 19 | 19 | 19 | 19 | 19 | 6 | 101 | |
| KHM-L | 10 | 10 | ||||||
| Total | 39 | 39 | 41 | 39 | 41 | 17 | 29 | 275 |
After the two monocolored cycles, what would be the third one? They probably all needs to be creatures, so Tyvar is out. Then you got black, where you got a pair of Angel and Demon both berserking. What a difficult choice. Don’t say it’s wordiness, Goldspan Dragon haven’t shrunk its font after all and still ends up being a strong card. Don’t say it’s multiple shots at something, because… Don’t say it’s mana value, because our Changeling commander has just one devotion.
Planeswalker cast wise, we have quite the novel selection. Two of them returning. Two are brand new. Outside of Tibalt, who returned?
Lastly there’s a giant serpent called Koma. Thank god, its name has a fourth letter so it costs 7 mana instead of 3. That’s how we closed a four-colors loop: Niko -W-> Kaya -B-> Tyvar -G-> Koma -U-v, Tibalt didn’t participate at all, but well that would also require someone replace their black with red. That sounds hard to imagine.
It’s crazy to see black and green both get the lead in both rare and mythics. Usually, you’d expect these two rarities to balance each other out. Well, maybe you can just blame the Gods on that. For the rest of the mortals, these splittings will suffice:
The first cycle is too damn close to a commander one. We get three actual commanders, then one Vehicle that can only lead a deck relatively recently but before that is already plenty broken enough to be notable. And the last one is the evolving creature, even though it isn’t one to be able to get a name at the last tier, but I guess I take the desginer’s regard for this design to account here. The next two cycles, are about set mechanics that tied exactly two cards of the same color together. For Esper, it’s foretell. Then for Red, it’s Boast (I know the black commander has it too). And for Green, the iffiest one here, it’s Elves, thankfully both cards are also Warriors, which you can say about the Berserkers too. If you really needed to split them, look for creatures versus magecraft in foretells, and 2 drops versus not in the creatures side?
Onto the second half, we have an almost cycle of cards that let you choose a creature type to give them some favor over the others. Red doesn’t have one, so I decided to put Tibalt’s Trickery in because it also asks for a choice, unfortunately one that proves to be far more broken than the rest of this “cycle” because it’s basically doing cascade.
We then follows with a cycle of cards explicitly supports both their creature types, race and class. Gruul is in a pickle with this one, so let’s look at the last cycle to see how I rationale out of this. This one certainly reeks of the last cycle, with a reference to Birthing Pod of all things. Also there’s a Rune support card here, we’ll see what those are soon. The last one is a Giant kindred card, I surely decided against swapping it with the Equipment archetype card above it.
Multicolored wise, there’s the four remaining Pathways which I’d rather talk about in ZNR’s article. We’re here to talk about the spells, which is two creatures and a cycle of Sagas. Let’s go with the latter first. All of them are two devotion expect for the Orzhov one, maybe we’ll see why very soon. That one costs 4 mana like three other enemy cards, the most expensive one is 6 mana and the rest are all an affordable 3, four of those creates token on their first chapters, which you can also find in two more expensive Sagas. Half of those has a chapter that synergizes with their kindreds, usually the token you just create. One more just spells its kindred in all the chapters. All of these cards last for three chapters, with only two impulse draw pieces merging the last two chapters.
Name wise, three characters and three names get name dropped, the former are all black cards and the latter could have formed a four-colors loop if Izzet played in. Which it doesn’t, but who says “Frost and Fire” anyways? Another word you should read carefully to realize it isn’t that generic: “Bloodsky”, not just “Bloody”!
And we still have the space for two more 3/3 creatures. In Rakdos and Golgari, as if these two colors didn’t already got a bias for them. Both represents their hunger by eating the death to get +1/+1 counters, then keep living to see something else die (in either order). Most importantly, one is a commander, the other not.
Colorless wise, we got three of each artifacts and lands. One of each type is flavored for the Changelings, and both can offer one in one way or another. The second pair is flavored for the Gods, whether to be an automatic value engine or to give the Gods back what other planes would have given them (Indestructible). The last pair is about tutors, the artifact is basically a kindred version of Birthing Pod, and the land is The World Tree.
This land is kinda infamous because it’s surely a very legendary sounding name, yet the land is totally normal and you can just put a bunch of them on the board at the same time. The argument is that: