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)
Dropping this early will probably end up giving you 3-4 tokens over the course of the game. Drawing it late is close to a disaster. It feels like it needed to do something on its own like make a token when it ETBs to be worth it.
It’s going to be a calamity alright, for your opponent. This comes down and hits like a ton of bricks doing absurd things if you’re double copying something with an ETB. Firey horsey goes BRRRR
A selective Pyroclasm can put a serious hurting on your poor opponent because you don’t have to make it obvious by not playing creatures. It’s limited to two damage and gets pricy if you want to do both, but still well worth it for the potential blowouts.
I would make the joke about chasing the roadrunner, but everyone else already has. Something something.. Looney Tunes.
A hasty deuce deuce for two is great in a beatdown deck and this doesn’t even have that annoying must attack every turn clause. Instead, its giving something else the opportunity to rev their motors and get hasty with it.
I wouldn’t be this high on this card in most sets, but it’s like striking gold here in Thunder Junction. It is prepared to commit a crime every single turn for the low cost of one mana. Bring on the synergy.
This is a card I am only playing if it has some great synergy in my deck (which admittedly will be more often than this grade suggests). If you have a lot of things that trigger off playing two spells a turn, then this is a very cheap way to plot something and make that happen.
Getting to rummage away an extra land (or for one early on) is a solid addition on a bear. I can see myself happily adding a couple of these to most red decks.
While the three-mana damage-based removal is just fine, the possibility of hitting an artifact as well puts this in the same grouping as most of the other removal in the set.
Most of the time I doubt you’re going to get more than one attack in with this, but it’s already done its job as long as you get an extra card out of it.
Oh man, this is going to cause some problems in combat. Guess I first strike out all your blocks, oh here’s another attack step, maybe I even get some treasure tokens. Who knows? It’ll be a great time.
It’ll be hell to pay x+1 toughness to kill a creature. That rate is pretty terrible for killing the creature, but at least you can make some treasures.
It’s not hard to play a couple of cheap outlaws to drop this onto the battlefield for three mana early on. A big ol trampler that early is going to crush some dreams even if it doesn’t do anything else.
Getting three bodies for four mana feels great, giving two of them (and all of your other outlaws) haste feels even better. Those tokens having haste is wonderful because it lets you pump up one of your other creatures right away to get some damage in.
They took away the part of Tormenting Voice where you had to consider whether or not to hold lands. Now you just play them out and this will work itself out later.
This cranky wolverine is about to get aggro on anyone who touches his stuff.
Unless it’s later in the game, you’re probably going to end up plotting this so you have a better chance to hit a playable card off it. Don’t forget to not play a land before casting it in case you hit one.
This does give you some reach without asking too much of you. There are plenty of cards like Irascible Wolverine that make double spelling as easy as ABC. Still the same problem as other five drops where you can’t really play more than one of them.
Certainly not in the same range as a Ravenous Chupacabra, but can pull off a decent impression even if you don’t get the creature until the next turn. Plus, there is the old “Oh are you at two?” moments.
Weird comments aside, this card is a mythic uncommon. Take it and enjoy your time with it.
This is pretty close to telling your opponent that they either need to have removal or its game over on turn two. Outside of pumping out incidental treasures to put you far ahead in the game, you can cash them in for shiny new 4/4 flyers.
There are plenty of ways to make treasures running around so later in the game you might be able to poop out a Dragon as soon as you play this.
I don’t really see a deck that wants to run this. Maybe you can bring it in against a really heavy spells deck. In most cases, it’s hoping to be a card twenty-three curve filler.
I think we all know how these cards perform at this point. While it lacks any form of evasion, it does give you an outlaw with the ability to pass around the pump.
Being able to attack as a 5/5 menace sounds nice and all, but you do have to saddle it up. I would be fine with this as a top end in a very low to the ground deck.
Raging Goblin has seen some serious power creep over the years. This is a great little early beater that makes things awkward because of first strike. When he runs out of uses, you can cash him in for a new card and a treasure token.
To quote the Road Runner, “Beep Beep Mother Funker!” (Editor’s note: Josh, I obviously edited that word and I also highly doubt the validity of that quote)
I love that he has protection from coyotes, how else is Acme going to stay in business. Any aggressive deck will love this little guy smashing in early while having evasion later.
This feels like one of those cards that you either stare at all game or completely demolish your opponent with. They might as well scoop the poop if you redirect a removal spell and copy it, but it can be extremely awkward at other times.
This is a great way to double or even triple spell on turn five, but the body is merely alright. You don’t really want to draw it later in the game either. Feels like it will be a cut from really good decks, but slide right into ones that got into the right lane a little too late.
It’s great that you just have to control (instead of attack with) a beefy creature to get the trigger because you can curve into it. Don’t forget that it can trigger off of itself if you pump it precombat with one of those handy dandy 1/1 mercenaries or a combat trick.
I’m sure fellow Draft Lab member Dafore is going to be hyped every time he busts this since we all know his love for Festival Crasher. Flying and haste make this that much sweeter.
Yeah, I know this doesn’t have any extra value tacked on to it. The value is having an extremely cheap, very large trampling flyer. I’m not going to break the math out for this, just trust me it will get the job done.
Those of you who remember the days of Ray of Command are well aware of how much you can screw someone’s day up with an instant speed Threaten. If you don’t have anyway to commit a crime at instant speed, you probably shouldn’t be playing this at all.
This is a messed-up Magic card in limited. Your opponent basically has to have a removal spell that can actually deal with this and pay three life to prevent themselves from taking a one way trip to Wrecksville USA.
I don’t have to talk this up, it’s pretty obvious why its great.
This is fine, but really doesn’t do it for me unless I’m playing a heavy spells deck or am really light on removal. If you’re planning on double or triple spelling often, then bump it up a bit.
This gets significantly better if you’re playing it with cost reducers such as Geyser Drake. Without that, you probably want to limit yourself to one of these per deck so you don’t get stuck staring at multiples.
Wrap Up
Red feels pretty spicy with some busted bombs like Terror of the Peaks and Stingerback Terror controlling the skies. It has it’s usual variety of damage based removal as well as some small efficient creatures.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back soon with my limited review of the green 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.
