Best Outlaws of Thunder Junction Cards for Standard and Alchemy

Hey all. Outlaws of Thunder Junction releases on April 16, 2024 to MTG Arena next Tuesday, which means it is time to start looking over the cards and think about which ones will make an impact on Standard and Alchemy.

A lot of folks have already talked over a lot of these cards so I’m going to discuss my general philosophy when evaluating card spoilers as well highlight a few cards that I haven’t seen as much chatter about as my picks to see play. With all that said, let’s jump into it.

Card Evaluation Philosophy

When evaluating new cards there are three categories to keep in mind when trying to decide if they are going to see play or not:

1. Will this card be added to an existing deck,
2. Does this card create a new deck or revive an abandoned deck, and
3. Is this an impactful sideboard option?

Let’s go over each category one at a time with examples for each one.

(A quick note: These rules are mostly for evaluating cards from a competitive standpoint. When it comes to brewing, let your imagination run wild and try out any of the new cards that you think look awesome or seem fun!)

Will this card be added to an existing deck?

In Standard and Alchemy there is a huge list of existing decks, as OTJ is the last set before rotation, meaning that most of those decks are very clean and aren’t playing many awkward or so-so cards. So in this case we are trying to find upgrades of existing cards or cards that greatly shore up a weakness of the strategy.

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Duelist of the Mind is a good example of a card I think has a high chance to slot into an existing strategy, in this case Esper Midrange in Standard. Duelist of the Mind has great synergy with Raffine, Scheming Seer, after you’ve attacked and done all of your conniving, the Duelist of the Mind will have power equal to the number of creatures you attacked with, plus however many cards you’ve drawn already that turn. If you target it with the connive then it will be a huge vigilance attacker, making it great on offense and defense.

The other text of looting whenever you commit a crime is also likely to frequently come up, as Esper Midrange plays a lot of interactive spells, making Duelist of the Mind a good upgrade over other two-drop options like Faerie Mastermind or Lazav, Wearer of Faces.

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Another card I think has a shot is The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride in Golgari Midrange decks. The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride is a sweet 5-mana trample, haste card advantage machine, and slots in nicely into the existing Golgari builds. This card demands that you have creatures that you don’t mind sacrificing and Golgari has the perfect creature for this in Mosswood Dreadknight. Saddle up your Gitrog with the Knight and you’ll be drawing 3 cards, putting up to 3 lands into play, and have the ability to cast the adventure side of the knight from the graveyard the following turn. This is too much value to not at least try out.

Currently the deck usually plays Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal in the 5-mana spot, and while it has its own merits, The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride can have an immediate impact due to its haste, and helps Golgari close out the game against Ramp and Control while putting you ahead on cards against other midrange decks.

In Alchemy, the G/B Roots deck has fallen off a bit as the meta has adjusted to play more graveyard interaction and ways to interact with artifacts and enchantments. However, I think that the deck gets a couple of new tools that are going to give some new life to the archetype.

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First is Lively Dirge. Featuring the new mechanic spree, which allows you to choose any number of additional costs to gain additional effects as you cast the spell in a happy marriage between kicker and split cards, Lively Dirge can find a missing combo piece for just 3-mana, putting it into the graveyard to be recurred with a Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, or exiled to a Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to give your creatures its ability.

Or, for 4-mana you can bring back any of your missing combo pieces onto the battlefield to start going off, or, for 5-mana you can tutor for your missing combo piece and put it into play. While 5-mana sounds like a lot, if you already have a plant or two in play from Insidious Roots you’ll have no problem paying that cost.

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The next card for this deck is Honest Rutstein. When it comes into play you return a creature from graveyard to hand, which will trigger Insidious Roots, and then your creatures cost one less to cast. This makes going off with a Chitinous Crawler casting endless Propagator Primordium much easier as you only need one mana each time.

The existing decklists are very tight, so it might be hard to make room for these cards, but I absolutely believe they are worth trying.

Does this card create a new deck or revive an abandoned deck?

There will always be cards in a new set that require to be built around to be effective. In those cases the card usually doesn’t slot into an existing deck but rather requires a shell to be built around it to support it. The other case is sets always have new mechanics that synergize together, so you have to look at the pieces as a whole to try to evaluate if the mechanic is worth building around. In these cases we are looking for cards with powerful effects, are usually not too expensive, and get some amount of value right away or are hard to interact with.

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Legion Extruder is an exciting new card that acts as removal in the early game, and a powerful engine as the game goes on. However, it doesn’t really slot into an existing and popular deck, but there are so many possible ways to build around it in current standard. Oni-Cult Anvil is still around, and there are a plethora of blood, treasure, clue, and map tokens floating around, and most of those tokens come as extras stapled to creatures or spells, meaning we can get value from Legion Extruder turning those tokens into 3/3 creatures while still find value and impacting the board beforehand. This meets our criteria of having a powerful effect, being cheap to cast and to activate, and gets value right away while being hard to interact with as its an artifact.

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In Alchemy, I’m excited to try Loot, the Key to Everything as the center of a Temur Midrange deck. Loot requires you to play a lot of different permanent types and to be Temur, so it absolutely requires you to be building around it as it is a mediocre card if you aren’t gaining several cards worth of advantage every turn you have it in play.

I’m specifically looking to build around Loot in Alchemy because of an overlooked card from Alchemy: Eldraine, A Golden Opportunity, which provides an enchantment, a creature, and an artifact in one card, giving us 3 cards in our upkeep to Loot’s trigger. This value, combined with the possible value of Case of the Lost Witness, and Outlaws of Thunder Junction newcomer Fblthp, Lost on the Range, this Temur deck has the tools to out-grind the Esper Control and B/W Midrange decks that loom at the top of the format.

Again, this meets our criteria of having a powerful effect, being cheap to cast, and while ward 1 isn’t a huge wall to overcome, it can occasionally get us that first turn of card advantage to get us ahead. I’ll be going over a decklist I’ve put together for this one in an article next week, so look out for it!

Onto reviving abandoned decks, these are cards that fit into an existing shell that has been around for several sets but hasn’t quite been able to break into the top tier or has fallen by the wayside as the other decks in the meta have upgraded over time while it has remained stagnant. Sometimes those decks were just missing one or two playables, or needed a different type of card to combat the way the meta has developed.

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Aven Interrupter is a powerful flash threat that can delay problematic spells from our opponents such as Sunfall or Atraxa, Grand Unifier. White aggro has fallen out of favor in the meta in favor of the more explosive Boros Convoke, but Aven Interrupter is the perfect card against Control, Ramp, and even Midrange decks that are going to try to leverage sweepers against us.

Delaying the sweeper for a turn while adding 2 power to play can frequently give you the time you need to close out the game. Even delaying a Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or an opposing Knight-Errant of Eos for a turn helps you advance your board and push for lethal.

While a card like Reprieve in Alchemy can play a similar role, in the late game when the opponent has a lot of mana, they can frequently recast their sweeper, but when Aven Interrupter cause a card to be plotted, they can’t cast it until their next turn, making it effective at buying an extra turn at all points in the game. I’m also excited to try Aven Interrupter in a Flash shell built around Errant and Giada.

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Bristly Bill, Spine Sower is a powerful 2-drop that spreads counters around as the game goes on. While long forgotten, March of the Machine introduced several cards that cared about +1/+1 counters but the deck never quite got there as it lacked the card quality to compete in Standard. Bristly Bill provides a consistent source of counters to trigger cards like Dusk Legion Duelist and Botanical Brawler, has great synergy with Ozolith, the Shattered Spire, and gives us a nice mana sink later in the game to keep our team growing.

Usually aggressive decks struggle at pushing through opposing copies of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, but Bill helps us grow our creatures large enough to attack and trade. Ornery Tumblewagg, also from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, fills out the deck even further, giving us a critical mass of cards for this deck.

Is this an impactful sideboard option?

Some cards are designed to answer certain permanent types, like Disenchant, or to be powerful against certain strategies, such as Glistening Deluge to take out Green and White creatures. Other sideboard cards are creatures or planeswalkers that provide a certain effect that we want in certain matchups, like Liliana of the Veil against control decks to grind their hand down. When trying to evaluate if a card will see play as a sideboard card we are mostly thinking along the lines of the first category discussed above about seeing play in existing decks, but slightly altered to: Does this card fix a problem this deck has, or, is this card a more efficient version of a card we already play in the sideboard?

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In the case of fixing a problem this deck has, we get Rest in Peace from The Big Score bonus sheet. Rest in Peace is the most efficient and effective graveyard hate piece printed since Leyline of the Void, and sometimes it is even better as it still comes down early and exiles all cards that were already in graveyards.

Any white deck that struggled against the Temur landfall deck in Standard are going to want to stuff copies of this into the sideboard from day 1, as this makes their combo much slower and harder to execute. Expect Temur players to start to run enchantment removal in their own sideboards moving forward to answer resolved copies of Rest in Peace.

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In the case of being a more efficient version of a card we already play, we get Requisition Raid for white decks in Alchemy looking to answer all of the pesky artifacts and enchantments that are ever present in the format. Doing its best Wear // Tear impression, Requisition Raid can take out both an artifact and an enchantment for 3 mana, either one for 2 mana, and sometimes it will add counters to our team.

Flexibility and efficiency are exactly what you are looking for in a sideboard card, and I expect Requisition Raid to sit in sideboards in Standard and Alchemy until it rotates.

Wrapping Up

Outlaws of Thunder Junction looks like a sweet set that has a ton of awesome cards that will see play in both existing decks and new decks. Hopefully this short dive into card evaluation can be useful to you going forward and you can try to see cards from multiple different angles as they get spoiled.

The cards I went over today are just a few of the cards I am excited to try out in both Standard and Alchemy. The set comes to Arena on Tuesday the 16th, and I’ll be back before then to go over a few new brews for each format that I can’t wait to try. Until then, happy brewing!