Will Sword of Forge and Frontier Live Up To Its Predecessors?

Hello everyone!

So we’ve been able to review Lukka, Bound to Ruin, Nahiri, the Unforgiving, Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting, Nissa, Ascended Animist, and Jace, the Perfected Mind as compleated walkers, Kaya, Intangible Slayer, The Eternal Wanderer, and Koth, Fire of Resistance as our heroes, as well as Phyrexian Obliterator and White Sun’s Twilight, but we have even more sweet cards to preview! After over twelve years since being printed, we have a new Standard addition to the Sword cycle with Sword of Forge and Frontier!

As I said, it’s been a minute since we’ve had a Sword in Standard, and while this pushes us to the ninth sword of the cycle, it’s an exciting one right off the bat!

Like all the other swords, its 3 mana to cast, 2 to equip, gives +2/+2 and protection from two colors, which in this case, is Red and Green. Generally speaking, the Green swords tend to not be as powerful since getting protection from it is only useful against creatures where protection from something like Red or Black can blank both creatures and interaction, but of course, we have Red here as well!

Now, also like the rest of them, the Sword cycle is all about their on hit trigger! For this one, you get to Reckless Impulse and then play an additional land for turn. This feels a bit muted compared to other swords, but how good is this overall?

VERDICT

Realistically, I’ve never met a Sword I didn’t like, and this one is no exception. Overall, this sword doesn’t have the best color pairing, nor does it have the best on hit, but I think both halves of it are better than they look. Protection from Red is huge on a Sword, second only to Black, and since Red is picking up in popularity recently, this gains a lot of stock there. Unfortunately, Green has been functionally absent from Standard for quite awhile, but you never know what might get printed that can change that in a hurry.

What I think is really interesting about this Sword is the potential raw card advantage this provides. This is the only Sword that, on hit, could functionally draw you two cards, and even if you only get a land out of the deal, that’s really quite powerful.

There’s even another great feature of this card that I feel is going to be very overlooked – the matchup swaths that this covers. So we have the obvious matchups where this would be good, Red and Green decks, right? While again, Green isn’t represented right now, that could change and make this Sword much better. So is this Sword not good against other color combinations? Not at all. Since this Sword has such raw card advantage when you connect, this could even shine in matchups where you wouldn’t think it’s that good such as Grixis as you can scoot right past their Bloodtithe Harvester and Corpse Appraiser to start fueling your hand in a hurry. Furthermore, Swords are just really good at making every creature you play a threat, and when this one can give you two new cards to work with, that can’t be underestimated.

This definitely isn’t the strongest Sword of the cycle, but you definitely shouldn’t underestimate it either as this has some real potential in Standard!

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