There’s a void in my brain for the Wild West theme honestly. Which is why I won’t be going any depth into the whole argument about NotC glamorizing colonizations or something people ranted about. Instead I’ll probably going in depth about how horribly color imbalanced this set is, which may be rooted in how random the characters selection is, which may be rooted in so many problems of this era of Magic in general. It may sell better than Karlov Manor just for the value engines alone, but for me it’s rare things get this sloppy.
Design lore: This set came about because NotC wanted to design a villains set, since so many times before they’ve headlined sets with the heroes (MaRo put Origins as the example, for instance, it had the Gatewatch). They wished they could have done it in a core set, but a villains set maybe would wish for more commander slots, so they gotta wait. Until now, where Omenpaths can let anything from other planes gather in one place. Then it felt fitting to have them do a heist, then it felt fitting to have them do so in a Western world, which could have been Vryn, but no, people will fill vowels in that to make something nasty, especially considering the rings associated to that place, so gotta do something else. Something that may ends up being too obvious looking, all things considered.
How much is wrong about that? Well, first off, a commander heavy set. Did you know what set from the year before OTJ also had a lot of commanders? It was March of the Machines, admittedly it was more in favor of the heroes or well you see more of the battles and different planes. Actually Dominaria United had more commanders, so more to the point. That honestly it was too soon to get a set with 43 commanders.
Secondly, to jump straight from fleshing out Vryn to having to make a new world? Why not flesh out another world? There’s an argument saying that both Karlov Manor and Thunder Junction could have been parts of Capenna, the American plane allegedly. Or sandier just have this outlaw land be a new Amonkhet continent. Personally I’m so nebulous about Wild West I’d say any idea could work, if anything one should have sit there and find another thing to combine with.
The plane is a “newly discovered by Omenpaths” desert that “used to be empty” but now so many characters from many different planes rush in for capitalism I guess. So many of these characters we coincidentally know so well, like a few have already appeared in the last 3 sets. That really makes the Omenpaths seem not as random as it seems, moreso convenient for the chosen characters.
The actual mechanics are focused on making you feel like a villain, so very top down things that may or may not connect well together.
First off, there’s the act of committing a crime. Probably pitched as the opposite of Heroic (or Valiant as known in Bloomburrow), then they realized that pointing things at people’s face or milling their deck is just as evil, so that counts too. With such a huge spectrum of things, the value engines associated with crimes unfortunately had to be limited to once per turn, which made up a honestly unprecedented volume, which made people really damn aware of how dumb and maybe slimey the wording on these stuff are. Whenever X, thing Y. This ability triggers once per turn. Usually that first half is much longer. We all wish it was The first time X this turn, thing Y. but no, that allegedly wouldn’t play nice with duplicating triggers, which is a whole genre of value engines. So turns out, value engines are all to blame for each other being this mess. Also did I forget to admit that board wipes or any effect that just scales to each opponents without targeting aren’t crimes, how funny?
Secondly, there’s plotting. It’s basically foretell back in Kaldheim but 1. Without any mystery 2. Because instead of paying 2 then pay the rest, you pay the plot cost upfront which varies then you cast for free. The costs could range from 1 mana discount (due to basically suspending) to a form of kicker, which would give a bonus. Frankly, its strongest purpose is to get multiple spells cast on the same turn, to exploit a tapped out player or to synergize the spells together or to just bank the mana that wouldn’t be wise to cast the spell right away. Not terrible design, knowing how derivative it is.
Thirdly, there’s spree.
You had Entwine which can go from 1 to 2 modes or 2 to 4 modes. You have Escalate which can go step by step from 1 to all 3 modes. But they all had a problem, they require the different modes to cost equally. Which more often than not isn’t the reality, friendly reminder Tormod’s Crypt is free yet there’s a 3 mana charm doing the same thing. You can wave away that with the ol’ “flexibility” tax but that might end up leaving the card in jank hell. So no, we want to cost each mode correctly to their values. So that’s more like Fuse split cards, problem with that is that you don’t want to cut the Magic cards into 3, 4 parts, oh right there’s a 5 parts card, it cut the 5th corner just for annoyance.
So now you got these Spree cards, they start with a small base cost but obviously you can’t end here, then you pay for at least one of the modes’ costs to get the corresponding effect. Hence why the top right of these cards is weirdly sharp with a tiny plus on it. How long did it took for them to try this with additional costs, honestly I’d just write the keyword plus the cost right below the normal costs for a lot of these kicker variants already. I do like my structures, and these provide fair amount of it. All good modal cards sets do.
Fourth is the grouping of the outlaws, which are Rogues, Pirates, Assassins (not Ninjas you didn’t look up), Warlocks and Mercenaries (so hard to spell) Unlike party, you don’t need one of each, you just need any combination of them, including the new token that can offer heroic buffs, ironically enough.
Lastly, there’s Mount which got reused for Aetherdrift and Desert which have sand in them, so I don’t have to drool further. What I have the most problems with surely aren’t these. Honestly in retrospect these just runs into the same problem as party really, reaching out for external kindreds for the sake of getting their kindreds and not the help they actually bring just doesn’t make for great decks. As in you don’t put party types in Kaldheim or Lost Caverns and pretend that makes these mechanics any less parasitic really.
So far doesn’t seems as bad as I may make it out to be. So where the bad really is?
Things looks normal, right? The same 20 mythic rares, split evenly between mono and multi colored, right? Well no, there’s a Jace at the dead last slot in the set, because apparently he was supposed to appear in the Aftermath version of this set (that’s a whole different thing I’ll rant about). So actually there’s 11 monocolored and 9 multicolored, sounds like balance but knowing other sets it really isn’t.