5.0: Disgustingly powerful and basically unbeatable. Either answer it the turn it comes down or just pack up your cards. (Esika’s Chariot, Fury, Starnheim Unleashed)
You deal extra damage with this, save your creature, and gain a bunch of life and if that isn’t enough, you get to do it all again later on. It being a sorcery is pretty lame, but it boosts your creature up so much that it’s still worth it.
Assuming that your deck is built around this (you have at least 12+ spells) then this will be a decent enabler for the Flashback heavy decks. Do keep in mind that some Izzets decks won’t be interested in this sort of effect if they’re too spell light. Missing on this is very brutal and way too likely to happen if you don’t have the proper spell count.
This comes down, protects itself, and then flips and straight up murders the opponent. You’d have to be crazy far ahead or have a board full of fliers to stand a chance against Arlinn, though it is possible which is what keeps this from being a 5/5.
In a normal set this would be way worse, but there’s infinite cards that make Decayed tokens in Dimir. A 3/2 Decayed token is so much better than a 2/2 that even this minimal stat boost is going to go a long way.
Two Unearths out of one card is a pretty sweet deal, but you do need a couple things to go right in order to be bringing back decent creatures both times. The Flashback is also a little expensive, and all that combines to make this a card that I’m happy to play but not all that excited about.
Another great payoff for amassing a ton of Decayed Tokens. A cool trick with this is that you can attack with all your Decayed tokens and after damage resolves, but before combat ends, sacrifice them to this and get a huge creature!
Somewhat similar to Cackling Counterpart from original Innistrad, except Croaking Counterpart lets you copy any creature while also having the best art and flavor in the entire set! Assuming that you have any creatures with decent ETB’s, this should be solid.
This is a good beater on its own that will occasionally Orcish Oriflamme up your creatures, which is pretty nice in the Selesnya go-wide aggressive deck.
The front side of this is already above rate and once you bring it back with Disturb it’s going to start accruing a lot of Clues and value. Nearly every Disturb card in the set has been good, and Dennick is no exception.
This is another good Disturb card that becomes even better with the more Disturb and Flashback cards you have. It milling two is nice since that helps to fuel your graveyard and its second ability.
If your opponent has some busted artifacts and enchantments then I guess this does the job, but giving them lands means that this isn’t going to be good to cast until the very late game. What really interests me with Dire-Strain Rampage is when it’s used as a sorcery speed Harrow with Flashback in the Temur Flashback decks. While land thinning is very much overrated in Magic, getting four lands out your 17 land deck is sustainable and gives me some Dreamscape Artist vibes from this. Ramp that can pop off an Unnatural Growth actually seems pretty darn solid in the right deck.
This reminds me a lot of Unburial Rites, though Diregraf Rebirth is slightly more expensive and way harder to splash. Still, two Zombify off one card is a good deal and this is an especially nice one to mill in the Golgari graveyard matters deck.
This seems fantastic for constructed, but lackluster in limited. Looting is card disadvantage and while you can get value off the cards you’re discarding, you would need a very specific deck for the mana you’re spending on this to end up providing enough value. You really don’t want to spin your wheels in limited, and I fear that that is all this is going to accomplish.
Fleshtaker is incredibly difficult to block and race. It puts your opponent in an awkward position because of how hard it is to block, yet your opponent will often need to block it due to the risk of dying from you sacrificing your board and making this huge. Gaining life and Scrying from the creatures that get sacrificed makes Fleshtaker a top notch blocker as well.
This seems like a nightmare to play against. A 3/3 First Strike is really hard to attack into and really hard to block, so I would think that this is going to connect a lot. Rakdos has so many ways to deal damage that I would imagine that this will be drawing a powerful spell on almost every one of your second main phases until the opponent is defeated.
Teach by Example with Flashback?! My goodness is this going to be disgusting when combined with Rise of the Ants and Seize the Storm. Even just copying cheap removal twice is going to be hard to beat.
Assuming you build around this, it’s a really powerful top end that’ll be easy to find if you’re self milling. I would imagine making 5+ Decayed tokens to be enough to overrun the opponent. This is such a unique effect and I’m sure some Golgari decks will be able to abuse it.
Sometimes this will be a 4/3, and other times it will be a 9/8. What makes me optimistic that this will usually be huge is the abundance of Decayed enablers. Sending in your undead squad and then following up with this is going to immediately demand removal from the opponent, otherwise this grizzly fellow is going to trample right over them.
It sucks that this can’t protect your creatures from removal, but giving them a small buff and retriggering ETB’s multiple times is still powerful enough for this to be valuable. You can also reset Disturb which is pretty neat!
There are just way too many board states where this won’t do anything. Limited isn’t about Lava Spikes; it’s about building a board presence and leveraging it. Maybe some crazy aggressive Rakdos deck will want this, but for the most part this is supposed to be for Constructed, not limited.
Good early, good late, and a lot of bodies out of one card. This isn’t the most powerful multicolored card around, but it does good work and synergizes well with what Selesnya is trying to accomplish.
Wait, so this is a mana creature that makes your other humans into mana creatures, buffs all your creatures every turn, and has protection from a very relevant creature type of the format? My god that’s good! This seems near unbeatable if it lives, but it’s fragile so all of the burn and most of the removal in the format should take Katilda down. At least you have to tap it to buff your team so that there’s a small window where you can kill this before dying to it.
Needing to attack to get the mana is a little awkward, but what I’m really after with this is the backside which should add a ton of power to the board of most Gruul decks.
Liesa immediately catches you back up no matter the board state, kills the opponent very quickly, and completely dominates combat. This is a better Baneslayer Angel and we all know how good she was in limited.
This has to be the creepiest card in the set by far. Olag reminds me of when that little girl from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood gets turned into a chimera by her father (Editor’s Note: Spoiler Alert!). Talk about spooky! The front side of Ludivec is whatever, but being able to flip this into a huge threat once the 2/3 get’s outclassed is great. I love early creatures that have late game capabilities, and Olag is without a doubt going to be a major headache for the opponent once the game gets to that point.
If you have a lot of creature based graveyard synergies this can be better, but it often will just be a big dumb vanilla creature in the late game. Old Stickfingers probably has one of the best names in the set though!
A 2/3 Haste for three is already quite good, and Rem Karolus offers even more. It provides a nice little boost to your burn spells while also being a flagbearer for your opponent’s burn spells. This is a classic aggressive Boros threat that I’ll rarely be passing.
I want to give this a 0/5, but maybe there’s a situation with this that I’m not thinking of. This feels like a Think Twice that you have to work for, which I’m personally good on.
Rite of Oblivion is crazy powerful with Decayed tokens because at that point it’s two great removal spells with very little downside. Being able to target any nonland is just the cherry on top for this all-star removal spell.
This is going to be good in any Simic deck, but it’s going to be especially insane in the Flashback heavy decks. Rootcoil Creeper powers out all your spells early on and once it’s no longer that useful, you can just get back your Seize the Storm or whatever busted Flashback spell you have chilling in the exile zone.
The Firebolt–Lightning Helix combo right here is going to be a great piece of recursive removal that your aggressive opponents are going to have nightmares about.
A huge flier that buffs most of your team while also finding more creatures seems very tough to beat. I’ve always been a big Sigarda, Host of Herons fan and I’m glad that she didn’t get Anguished Unmaking’d like Avacyn did.
Since limited is way less about synergies, this is often going to be a Sleight of Hand with Flashback. Nothing crazy powerful here, but the fun factor alone is going to make me want to take this whenever I see it. Who doesn’t love hitting their opponent with the Gonti, Lord of Luxury ability?
The second and third ability are whatever here. What I really care about is milling myself with this in play and then killing my opponent with a huge trampler. Even as a 3/3 Trample this is great, so take this early and enjoy building around it because it’s a sweet design!
All the Flashback cards in the set in conjunction with this reducing the cost of spells means that I wouldn’t be surprised to see this hitting for 6-8 damage most turns. I unfortunately foresee myself getting Skreelix’d out of way too many games.
This is like a Hulking Bugbear on steroids! It hits hard and then slowly takes over the board once the game reaches a standstill. Another very powerful multicolored card that I’ll be more than happy to commit to early in a draft.
Talk about a novel on a card. Teferi seems powerful but not unbeatable, which is a good place to be for planeswalkers from a limited perspective. The +1 is nice because it can help you double spell the turn you cast Teferi, which in a way helps protect him. Anticipate as a -2 is fine, but not amazing, and the ultimate is mediocre and far from game winning. Still, adding some mana, gaining some life, and drawing some cards all add up to make me believe that Teferi is going to be taken early and perform decently.
A 3/3 for three that is a Coastal Piracy for werewolves is already great. Once this flips into a huge creature that can Kessig Wolf Run any werewolf at any point, your opponent better hope they have removal ready otherwise they’re never going to be able to keep up in combat.
The only time I would be excited about this is if I had a ton of werewolves in my deck. If you do then this is going to crush the opponent once you flip 2-3, but otherwise it seems potentially very underwhelming. Not every Gruul deck will want this, but the ones that do should be able to get a good combat step and draw a card off of this.
Vadrik will grow as the game goes on, but it unfortunately starts off rather underwhelming. If you have a ton of instants and sorceries you’ll be interested in the cost reduction, and I’d like to think that most Izzet decks are going to have a high spell count.
Now this is a fantastic vampire lord. Early on this should connect often and ensure that all your vampires enter with an extra counter, whereas later in the game it should be easy to deal some sort of damage and then play this and buff all your vampires. First picking this is going to be a huge reason to want to be an aggressive Rakdos deck.
I hate cards that give my opponents options because their best interest will always be at odds with yours! It’s nice that this has Flashback, but getting a Raise Dead and some mediocre attacker for the turn just doesn’t seem worth five mana. Also, this does nothing unless you have a decent amount of creatures in your graveyard. I’m unsure of this card and I want to try it before I lock in that it’s mediocre/bad.
Any sort of aggressive deck is going to be happy to play this. I can see a lot of games ending in the midgame after you play this, flash this back, and then attack with all your creatures. It’s situational but I think that the effect is powerful enough at dominating combat.
There’s a lot going on here, but for the most part this is just Manalith with some upside. Flipping Day and Night with this is very clunky though, which makes me unsure of what deck would even want this. Maybe some multicolored green deck could use the fixing or some Gruul werewolves deck would want access to a card that can keep it Night for most of the game.
This isn’t terrible, but boy did something go wrong during the draft if you end up having to play this. Also, please don’t use this as a form of mana fixing.
Moonsilver Key is way too slow to be a source of mana fixing and there are literally no good artifacts in the set that this can find. Wait I take it back! Maybe, and I mean maybe this is playable if you’re a three color deck with Mask of Griselbrand. Even then, I very much have my doubts though.
It fixes early on, but it’s honestly way too clunky for my liking. There are so many good five drops in this set, so why would I pay an additional two early on for one that is only okay?
Maybe your opponent has a Mask of Griselbrand or a Arlinn, the Pack’s Hope that you desperately need some sort of answer too. I prefer to not bank on Pithing Needle because it normally does nothing unless your opponent draws the specific card you’re targeting, but if you face a deck with a lot of juicy targets then this could have it’s place.
This doesn’t synergize well with anything in the set and is also pricey to activate. I feel like a lot of players are going to waste their early turns casting this and activating it instead of just committing actual creatures that can attack and block without costing you mana. This is better than Mimic, but only by the tiniest bit so still don’t play it!
Fixing is important in limited because there is so little of it, and these lands are especially nice since they’ll almost always come into play untapped. If I’m in the same colors as a land that’s being passed to me, I’ll usually only take the absolute best commons and uncommons over it.
Not as good as the dual lands since this has the cost of always coming into play tapped. Regardless of that, I always try to end a draft with 1-2 Evolving Wilds because a manabase like that is so much more consistent than a classic 9/8 split mana base.
This isn’t a 5/5 on power level; it’s a 5/5 because you’ll always first pick this over anything because of its versatility. It’s also gotta be a 5/5 from the sweet name alone. This flips into a near unbeatable threat in the late game, and all you have to do is feed it a few Decayed tokens. Hostile Hostel is amazing and under no circumstances should you pass it. I’m definitely looking forward to crushing my opponents with a good ol’ fashioned Monster House!
Color Ratings
Keep in mind that these are just my guesses from reading the cards:
I do think that green is going to be the best color, but after that the other four seem very close in my opinion. Well that about does it! Innistrad: Midnight Hunt looks insanely fun and I cannot wait to start drafting it! Hopefully these set reviews will help you go into your first draft with more confidence and a better understanding of the format. I’m crossing my fingers that I’m not too off with any of my ratings, but it’s pretty difficult to rate cards without playing with them now that’s for sure!
As always, thanks for reading and happy drafting!
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While Chris Kvartek technically kicked off his career in 2012, he burst onto the scene in 2019 like few before him. With an early season Top Finish at Mythic Championship II and narrow miss for his second at Mythic Championship IV, Kvartek earned invitations to two more Mythic Championships through online qualifiers. He secured his second Top Finish of the season at Mythic Championship VII, and now this rising star must prove he can stay among the elite of professional Magic.
