Murders at Karlov Manor (MKM) Limited Set Review: The List Part 2

Hey everyone! It’s time to slap on my detective hat and solve some cases in Magic: The Cluening. We all know that it was really Urza with the Candelabra of Tawnos in the Library of Alexandria. Wait, you’re telling me it wasn’t? Uh oh, I’ll leave all of that to Scooby and the gang then. While they are solving some mysteries, I’ll be reviewing the full set of Murders at Karlov Manor.

Per usual, I’ll be grading the entire set for the purpose of limited as well as writing about a million other articles about it. With all that, you’ll be well prepared to crush some serious dreams.

Here’s the usual grading scale:

• 5.0: Disgustingly powerful and basically unbeatable. Either answer it the turn it comes down or just pack up your cards. (Gruff Triplets, Virtue of Persistence, The Eternal Wanderer)
• 4.5: Incredible bomb that still gives your opponent a slim chance. (Virtue of Loyalty, Imodane's Recruiter, Realm-Scorcher Hellkite)
• 4.0: Great rare or the absolute best uncommons and removal. (Faunsbane Troll, Gumdrop Poisoner, Talion's Messenger)
• 3.5: Great role filler or removal that you never cut. (Candy Grapple, Hearth Elemental, Torch the Tower)
• 3.0: Good playable that I’m basically never cutting. (Shrouded Shepherd, Spellscorn Coven, Sharae of Numbing Depths)
• 2.5: Decent playable and the bar I hope nearly every card in my deck to reach. (Evolving Wilds, Archon's Glory, Flick a Coin)
• 2.0: Mediocre filler that normally is your 20-23rd card(s). (Mintstrosity, Ice Out, Grabby Giant)
• 1.5: Replaceable, overall bad filler. Could also be decent sideboard cards. (Titanic Growth, Scarecrow Guide, Territorial Witchstalker)
• 1.0: Bad filler. Gets cut most of the time. (Dark Tutelage, Kindled Heroism, Impact Tremors)
• 0.5: Very unhappy to main deck this, but maybe it has fringe sideboard applications. Cards that “could” be situationally decent, but bad in most situations. (Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Mana Flare)
• 0.0: Unplayable in every possible situation. They rarely print cards this bad these days. (Hew the Entwood, One with Nothing)

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The List

Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

Rating: 3.5/5

You can usually make the assumption that any Planeswalker that says Jace on it is going to be pretty good. This does have a difficult casting cost and doesn’t do anything to protect himself, but he does provide card advantage in spades.

You are more likely to mill yourself with him to fuel Collect Evidence and you don’t have to worry about decking because he conveniently wins the game if you do so. It’s no mystery that this is a strong card.

Krosan Tusker

Rating: 2.5/5

While not as great as he was back in the day, this is still an instant speed Green Divination or a chonker. That’s a solid card considering that it can fix your mana as well.

Kuldotha Rebirth

Rating: 2.0/5

There aren’t any zero cost artifacts floating around the set, but there are a ton of ways to make a cheap Clue token such as Novice Inspector or Hard Evidence. Getting three bodies for one mana is a great addition to the go wide decks. Things do have to line up right, but it will be put a ton of pressure on your opponent when they do.

Laid to Rest

Rating: 1.5/5

I wasn’t a fan of this in VOW, but to be fair the humans deck was pretty bad whether or not you had this card. Of course, you always need to be looking at these cards in the context of the set you are playing them in.

There are a ton of humans in this set, but unfortunately the detective tokens are not specifically human.  If you already have a decent concentration of humans, then this will be a fine late pickup. If not then you want to take a hard pass on this.

Leonin Relic-Warder

Rating: 2.5/5

This is mainly going to be coming in to kill a clue token, but it could take away a key enchantment such as Chalk Outline. The idea of hitting a case before it can be solved sounds nice, but you are opening yourself up to them getting the initial value out of it again when this dies.

Magmaw

Rating: 2.5/5

While a 4/4 for five mana isn’t going to get anyone’s motor revving, this does wreak havoc on every combat. Eating two of your creatures suddenly turns into them losing one of them or you can chump block while still tossing a Mogg Fanatic at their face.

Theres also the situation where you count your creatures and look across the table with a smirk to ask “What’s your life total again?”.

Mass Hysteria

Rating: 1.0/5

This is the type of Mass Hysteria we had for Y2K. People think its going to matter and in the end it really wasn’t worth it.

I understand that you are probably going to be taking better advantage of this than your opponent, but you’re also going down a card while trying to poke through enough damage.

Maverick Thopterist

Rating: 3.0/5

A prime example of a card being significantly better in the set it was designed for. This card was bonkers in Kaladesh, but you are far less likely to have a ton of cheap artifacts here. You can pop out some cheap clues, but your whole deck isn’t going to be dedicated to artifacts.  This is still really good, just not the OMFG card it could be in Kali.

Mentor of the Meek

Rating: 3.5/5

This, on the other hand, gets significantly better in a set filled with two power creatures and Disguise creatures. It’s going to be an inverse Rhystic Study (shoutout to commander players) because I can assure you that I will be paying the one.

Metalspinner’s Puzzleknot

Rating: 1.5/5

You’re going to be five mana and two life into a Divination by the time you get done with this. There have been plenty of sets where this would be good, but no one is desperate for card advantage when you have so many clues running around. It does give you a self-enabler for all of the “when you sacrifice an artifact” cards.

Millstone

Rating: 1.0/5

This was actually a decent win condition way back in the slow limited board stall days. Now you are going down a card for the privilege of fueling their graveyard synergies. You could do it to yourself, but your payoffs better be insane to go down that path.

Mistveil Plains

Rating: 2.0/5

The opportunity cost for this is fairly low as long as you don’t have too many comes into play tapped lands. Unfortunately, Escape Tunnel, ironically enough, is one of the best ways to shuffle your library after putting some of your best cards back on the bottom.

This could be a cool card in a Living Conundrum shell where your goal is to get to the bottom of your deck.

Molten Psyche

Rating: 0.5/5

Yeah, that’s going to be a no from me dawg. This is a constructed card that takes some weird stuff going on to want to play it. Maybe you’re heavy on artifacts against a deck with a ton of card draw and you try to burn them out with this out of the sideboard. Not likely though.

Monologue Tax

Rating: 0.0/5

Here we are, once again, with the seriously don’t ever play this card. Would you pay three mana to make a treasure? Not if you are of sound mind. This doesn’t even guarantee that. They can avoid it by casting a spell on their turn and an instant on yours so it can’t even prevent them from double spelling. Just hot garbage in limited.

Mystery Key

Rating: 1.5/5

Drawing three cards is a nice payoff, but you are three mana deep and need to be getting a creature through. Early on, you would be stunting your board development unless it conveniently slides into your curve. Later on, you still need a way to get through when they can see it face up on the board.

If you draw it when you are behind, it can be a dead card. I think people are going to remember the times this worked out and ignore when it was God awful.

Nyx Weaver

Rating: 2.5/5

I love this card in the Collect Evidence deck. It’s a fair rate to pay for a decently statted reach creature that fuels your deck’s strategy every turn without investing more mana. Then it can even sacrifice itself to bring a card back to your hand. That can be done at instant speed so you’re still good if you have the mana even if they use a combat trick or try to remove it.

Possibility Storm ONLY ON ARENA

Rating: 0.0/5

Nooooooooooppppppppeeeeeee! I have no idea why they would choose this card to add to Arena. It’s a casual Commander card, not even a real constructed card. In limited you would be paying five mana and a card to turn the rest of the game into a bunch of die rolls.

Putrid Warrior

Rating: 1.5/5

A difficult to cast Grizzly Bears that can add some life points in either direction. I’ll give it this, it’s not totally putrid. It’s just not something I am excited to be playing.

Quintorius, Field Historian

Rating: 2.5/5

I was thrilled to see our favorite Pachyderm coming back in a set that has a mechanic based around exiling things from a graveyard. Then I realized that every card in these colors with Collect Evidence are very good rares or mythics. There also aren’t a ton of spirits running around to pump up. I see him being splashed more often than not.

Ranger-Captain of Eos

Rating: 2.5/5

This is going to be entirely based off of your deck. This is great if you have two or three possible hits for this such as Novice Inspector. If you have zero one drops, then this drops down to the borderline of playability.

Shard of Broken Glass

Rating: 1.0/5

While I like the possibilities of being able to stack my graveyard, the decks that are trying to setup for that aren’t usually attacking early on. Not pumping the butt makes it much more likely that your creature just trades. I just don’t see a good home for this.

Smuggler’s Copter ONLY ON ARENA

Rating: 4.5/5

As excited as I am to finally be getting the looter scooter on Arena for constructed purposes, I’m even more hyped to see what happens when you drop it into a random limited environment. I don’t even need to explain why this is a busted card. If you see it, take it.

Spell Snare

Rating: 2.0/5

This can be an interesting card because it can be lifesaving when you are on the draw and get to pop off their two drop. It can also technically never hit anything. Let’s be honest though, when was the last time you saw a limited deck without a ton of two drops.

Stromkirk Captain

Rating: 2.5/5

There are some vampires, but not nearly enough to be a dedicated deck like in Shadows over Innistrad Remastered. The first strike is decent in this set, but not really worth it unless you have a small coven of vampires.

Syr Konrad, the Grim

Rating: 3.5/5

This guy was busted back in OG Eldraine draft and that was a very high-powered environment. I want to say that he will still be very good, but a little below the mythic uncommon level. I’m still slamming him over anything but a bomb rare.

Treacherous Terrain

Rating: 1.0/5

This card is just silly, I guess if you want to have a basic land cycler in your deck that has the outside possibility to dome them for eight.

Worldspine Wurm

Rating: 0.5/5

Eleven mana, that’s right eleven. It has a mechanic that prevents it from hitting the graveyard so you can’t reanimate it. You could cloak it and use one of the ways to flip it face up. You could even Show and Tell it into play.

Those are extreme corner cases that mostly involve other rares and mythics. Good look on drafting all of the right cards and drawing them.

Will there be a few games in this format where someone happens to have it in their deck, have eleven mana, and top deck this? Sure, but most of the time you draw this, it is just a mulligan.

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Wrap Up

That finally brings us to the end of our review of all of the cards from Murders of Karlov Manor. This second half of The List has some real disappointments in it as far as limited goes. It was clear that most of them were added to get them in the hands of real-life commander players except for Possibility Storm which is baffling as an Arena only thing. I don’t make those decisions though and at least I get to play with Smuggler’s Copter.  

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back tomorrow with my combos and synergies article for the Murders at Karlov Manor. Until then, stay classy people!

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.

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