Hey everyone! Are you ready to get crazy with cowboys? All of Magic’s villains (At least the currently available ones. Sorry, no Elesh Norn in a cowboy hat) are up to some shenanigans on Magic’s newest plane. They are setting up a massive heist so we are getting all kinds of bonus sheet stuff going on here that will surely shake up limited formats. While it won’t happen often, you will assuredly remember that time you got destroyed by Mana Drain.
Per usual, I’ll be grading the entire set for limited purposes. Maybe one day I’ll get to see sunlight again, but today is not that day.
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)
Playing a Manalith is not where you want to be in 2024 (I typed 2023 for the rhyme and then realized that it was not the correct year). Maybe you draw a card or two off of this later, but still not worth it unless you have a bunch of splashes.
I don’t ever really want to be running this because it is so expensive. There are decks that are going to need it and it will be a card to occasionally consider out of the sideboard.
These are cheap enough that they have a place in the right deck. They can help all the four or greater power things get that last little oomph such as equipping it on a Bristlepack Sentry to trigger themselves.
When you have an early mount and hit on this, it is amazing. When it lacks haste and misses, it’s less than stellar. I’m viewing it somewhere in between those two outcomes.
There isn’t enough self-mill to easily get to the bottom of your deck. You can consider sideboarding it in a long control mirror, but even then there are probably better things to be doing.
For those of you who have never had the pleasure of playing with Bouncelands, they are basically card advantage. You bounce that other land without going down on the quantity of mana you produce while still having it to replay. The only caveat on this one is that you need to be able to take advantage of the double colorless it produces.
I always like the variants of this land and this one is even a desert on top of the normal stuff. While I’ve had plenty of 8/8/Crystal Grotto mana bases in my time, I don’t see that happening here with the abundance of duals running around. I’ll still happily run this in anything playing three colors though.
A good comparison to this is Shimmerdrift Vale because it’s a tapped land of the color you choose with the land type of the set’s mechanic. This isn’t quite as good because there were way better payoffs for being heavy snow than there are for having a desert. Good card, not in the same range as the ping deserts.
Tapped duals are almost always solid picks when they are in your colors. These are good enough that you might even play one or two that you only have one color of. Pinging your opponent makes everyone recalculate how much damage they can take over the course of the game because they don’t want to die to a land drop. On top of that they commit a crime when they come into play which is just great in this set. You should probably be taking them higher than you were planning to.
Wrap Up
The artifacts are your normal mix of colorless filler for when your deck doesn’t quite get there on playables. The lands are mostly great with the ping deserts being particularly amazing.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back soon with my limited review of the of the Multicolor cards from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Until then, stay classy people!
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.
Josh is a member of the elite limited team The Draft Lab as well as the host of The Draft Lab Podcast. He was qualifying for Pro Tours, Nationals, and Worlds literally before some of you were born. After a Magic hiatus to play poker and go to medical school, he has been dominating Arena with over an 80% win percentage in Bo3 as well as making #1 rank in Mythic.
