Eldritch Moon - Dr. Stacey's Set Review
When Dr. Neil Stacey was a kid he figured he’d be a scientist when he grew up. Now he’s a scientist and has no idea what he’ll be when he grows up. He currently leads a bio-fuels research project at Wits University and resides in Johannesburg, which isn’t as bad as people say.
The more set reviews I write, the more apprehensive I am about writing them. Perhaps it’s because they run to high word counts and I’m getting progressively lazier, or perhaps it’s because set reviews offer something of a no-win scenario; either there’s no feedback because you’re mostly right, or there’s a ton of feedback but it’s because you’re wrong about everything.
I suspect that some percentage of Magic writers get things wrong on purpose just to court controversy and bring attention to their articles. I assure you I’m not doing that myself, but you’ll have to take my word for that as I say the following: sometimes good new cards for a deck wind up making that deck weaker.
On the surface that statement goes beyond the merely counter-intuitive to approach absurdity, but there’s a good rationale behind it as well as some past precedent. The chain of logic runs as follows; optimizing a deck for the mirror match must involve de-optimizing it for other matchups. This results in worsened win percentages against the rest of the field and therefore a weaker deck overall. A deck that is sufficiently prevalent can begin to cannibalize itself, compromising its strength against the rest of the field to target the mirror match. Giving a deck a wider range of options results in a higher likelihood that there are card choices available that are excellent for the mirror but weak elsewhere. In this way, a wide range of card choices can actually undermine a deck’s dominance in a format.
At present, Green/White Tokens is firmly placed as the format’s best deck, with Bant Humans as a possible contender. The Top 8s of the last two Standard GPs featured 55 copies of Dromoka’s Command from a possible 64, so it’s safe to say that the Standard format is dominated by combat-oriented GWx Dromoka’s Command decks.
With this in mind, there are effectively three ways for an Eldritch Moon card to disrupt the status quo. The first is to strengthen an existing deck sufficiently to compete with the GWx decks. This could take the form of cards that are highly powerful in their own right and for which there are existing shells, but it also includes synergistic cards that enable strategies which exploit weaknesses in the GWx decks. Aggressive flying creatures fit into this category, for example, because Green White Tokens in particular tends to be quite soft to fliers and some players have had success with seemingly weak decks full of flying creatures. Improving card quality in these shells would go a long way toward pressuring GW Tokens’ metagame dominance.
The second way an Eldritch Moon card can disrupt the status quo is to set up a brand new deck archetype capable of beating the GWx decks. Combo decks are a particular area of interest; a creature-based Standard format light on interaction and prone to board stalls is just the sort of metagame combo decks can exploit. Besides a handful of possible combo enablers, Eldritch Moon also brings some individually powerful cards that could form the core of a competitive deck playing fair Magic.
The third avenue for disrupting the status quo is to give GWx decks access to cards that enable them to cannibalize themselves, thereby allowing other decks to feed on the scraps. This category is surprisingly broad because it includes mirror-breaking cards for Bant Humans and Green/White Tokens, but also cards that are particularly effective in the matchup between the two.
I will begin my review of Eldritch Moon by identifying cards that may fall into one or more of these three categories, thereby promising the potential to shake up the format. Strictly speaking there is a fourth category; cards for GWx decks that are unambiguously better than the current choices and improve their matchups across the board. These decks are already quite dominant so we have to cross our fingers and hope there aren’t any such additions. I don’t think that there are, so it’s possible that Standard will loosen up a bit.
Cards that could power new archetypes
I will preface this by saying that it will take a lot to unseat the decks currently dominating Standard; they are powerful and robust enough that you can treat this section as speculative.
Harmless Offering
This seemingly innocuous card offers a lethal combo with Demonic Pact, handing your opponents an enchantment with the text “you lose the game.” Not too shabby, but quite a fragile combination because Harmless Offering does nothing on its own while Demonic Pact can be something of a liability. There’s also the prevalence of Dromoka’s Command to worry about, equipping the majority of the format with main-deck answers to the combo. The way to build this deck, then, is to have some alternative ways to get rid of Demonic Pact and to shave a copy or two of Harmless Offering itself. Another crucial element will be additional enchantments to shelter Demonic Pact from Dromoka’s Command. Oaths are a good bet in that regard, particularly Oath of Chandra and the new Oath of Liliana, which double up as removal, a key element in slow combo decks. If we’re going the route of playing Oaths it becomes tempting to run some planeswalkers too. In Red and Black we have access to Chandra, Ob Nixilis and the new Liliana, all of them quite reasonable options. A third colour is probably necessary to get access to some redundant ways to get rid of Demonic Pact and the way the deck shapes up will depend on what colour you go with.
Mirrorwing Dragon
4/5 is an excellent size for a flier in a format where Avacyn rule the skies. The triggered ability offers some protection against removal, which is nice. It’s a beating against Anguished Unmaking, which isn’t really relevant and it doesn’t trigger off of Dromoka’s Command, which is a pity.
Liliana, the Last Hope
This iteration of Liliana is quite easy to underrate. None of her abilities are particularly impressive. However, the past has shown us that with three-mana planeswalkers, they don’t need to be. They just need to be decent. The plus one ability is able to defend quite reasonably against early threats, holding off creatures like Sylvan Advocate. She will also mow down one-toughness creatures while adding loyalty which will be genuinely over-powered when it happens. You can also increase the versatility of toughness-based removal like Grasp of Darkness and Languish, getting those tough-to-remove 5-toughness creatures.
Her minus two ability has the potential to provide card advantage and card selection rolled into one, but does demand your deck be reasonably creature-heavy to reliably get full value. The fact that it fuels the graveyard will help certain decks, however, and that will be where Liliana really shines. The floor on this card’s power level is quite reasonable and the ceiling is amazingly high; that’s a recipe for a standard staple. I expect Liliana to be one of the better options in the three-drop slot for most decks that can cast her and to be excellent in decks that can make good use of her minus 2 ability. Whether or not any of those decks can succeed in the current format remains to be seen but there’s no doubt that this newest iteration of Liliana is a great card. Amusingly, she competes for a slot with her own Oath, which I can see being played ahead of her in certain decks.
Oath of Liliana
The best-case scenario for Oath of Liliana is that it’s a removal spell that also spits out an army, which is totally busted. The worst-case is that it kills a plant token for 3 mana, which is wretched. That worst-case scenario can be avoided in any deck with a reasonable number of planeswalkers for the triggered ability, in which case Oath of Liliana will be reasonable even when the sacrifice part is underwhelming. Curving this into Gideon is a big game, disrupting your opponent’s development while threatening to completely take over the board. Any black deck with a reasonable number of planeswalkers will want to run some number of these and any deck that’s heavy on planeswalkers is bound to at least consider splashing for this.
Foul Emissary
The flavour text on Foul Emissary could easily read “use this guy for Emerge.” You will generally get a card’s worth of value from the Enters the Battlefield Effect and you get a 3/2 after paying the Emerge cost. So you get a card, a 3/2 and a mana discount all in one neat package.
So I’m including Foul Emissary here as a stand-in for the Emerge creatures in general. Elder Deep-Fiend, Decimator of the Provinces and Distended Mindbender each have a massive impact on the game so it’s entirely possible that decks built around them could be a real presence in the format. The key ingredient for such decks is a steady supply of value creatures to feed to Emerge and with some of the best Emerge costs priced at seven mana, three-drops are particularly useful as they allow you to make a huge play on turn four. Foul Emissary and Matter Reshaper are set to be the Emerge-enablers of choice.
What I like about the prospective Emerge decks is that they go way over the top of what other decks are doing on turn four, so opponents are forced to deal with your early creatures or risk getting blown right out of the game. And if your opponent is spending cards to kill your value creatures, you pull ahead on cards. So the threat of the Emerge creatures forces your opponent into an attrition game where you have the advantage. Reflector Mage will still be a headache though.
Curious Homunculus
Standard doesn’t have the cheap cantrips necessary to easily flip Curious Homunculus, so there are some hoops to jump through before two mana gets us a 3/4 Prowess and a discount on spells. The payoff is worth it, though, and the base case of a two-drop mana dork isn’t terrible provided you have enough instants and sorceries to put it to work. This looks like a good fit for the Mono-Blue prison deck that has popped up here and there in Standard, but it could also anchor a more aggressive UR build, possibly teaming up with The Thing in the Ice.
Incendiary Flow
So what if red mages are reduced to sorcery speed Lightning Strike? We aren’t too proud to tap out in our main phase if that what it takes to get Sylvan Advocate out of the way. Red mages hate lawyers. Incendiary Flow is a far cry from the halcyon days of Lightning Bolt but it’s what Red needs; a cheap way to get rid of blockers early in the game that can go directly to the face later on.
Collective Defiance
Collective Defiance is a bit pricier than Incendiary Flow but can knock over slightly larger roadblocks and scales well into the late-game, turning into a slightly heftier Searing Blaze at four mana. The Windfall-type first ability will at the least serve as insurance against severe mana flooding, but could also see use filling graveyards or forcing opponents to ditch key cards. A little too expensive to be an automatic four-of in aggressive decks, but a nice top-end to have a few copies of.
Hanweir Garrison
Hanweir Garrison is an excellent aggressive creature, reminiscent of Goblin Rabblemaster in its ability to win rapidly in a vacuum. It threatens to do degenerate things alongside Thalia’s Lieutenant or perhaps even Hamlet Captain. and it’s able to safely attack into the many 2/3s and 2/2s of the format while adding to the board on each swing. Melding it with Hanweir Battlements is a corner case but the two cards are playable in the same decks and the payoff is significant enough to be add value to both cards.
All in all, Red has received some decent upgrades but probably not enough to be competitive.
Cards that power up existing decks
Spell Queller
The top Standard decks are vulnerable to fliers and a bit light on removal. Well, Spell Queller flies and if it isn’t removed it gives you an enormous advantage in tempo and puts you up by a card. There have been a few UW Flyers decks popping up here and there to take advantage of the format’s weaknesses but they haven’t really solidified as an archetype. Well, Spell Queller could easily be the card to change that.
Mausoleum Wanderer
The addition of a viable one-drop could make a big difference to UW Spirit decks looking to curve out and play an aggressive game against most of the format. A turn one Mausoleum Wanderer will reliably deal 2 damage per turn in a dedicated Spirit deck. An evasive one-drop that hits for 2 would already be pretty good, but the spell-countering ability pushes it over the top. You’ll often get some extra mileage out of it because several Spirits have flash, letting you increase Mausoleum Wanderer’s size at instant speed which forces your opponent into having two extra mana at critical points in the game. Pushing Collected Company or Languish back to turn 5 is already huge but getting to push them back to turn 6 will be backbreaking.
Selfless Spirit
Between Spell Queller and Mausoleum Wanderer, UW Spirits may well have gotten what it needs to take on the format’s big decks and Selfless Spirit looks like a solid addition to the deck as well. The deck looks likely to have a highly favourable matchup against GW Tokens and to be at least reasonable against Bant Humans so it could be a real influence in the metagame.
Hamlet Captain
Aggressive white Humans decks have actually had their fair share of success thus far in Standard, but Hamlet Captain could see them going in a slightly different direction with a green splash. A swarm of decent one-drops backed up by multiple two-mana lords is a good recipe for an aggressive deck.
These decks have previously splashed red for Reckless Bushwhacker. Hamlet Captain isn’t necessarily an upgrade but it is more on-theme and splashing green does bring Dromoka’s Command as an added bonus.
Cards that could let Dromoka’s Command decks cannibalize themselves
If you aren’t sold on the logic of how a card can be good in a deck but end up weakening its place in the metagame then ignore this subheading and pretend that the following cards are just part of the previous category.
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Thalia, Heretic Cathar is certain to be a big influence in Standard for as long as she is legal. Three mana for a 3/2 with first strike is quite reasonable in the format and her abilities are both exceptionally powerful. Thalia will be an easy inclusion in any aggressive deck that can cast her. One obvious home for her is Bant Humans; she is a human, she’s a good hit for Collected Company and she plays well in the deck’s combat-oriented strategy. One might assume that the printing of Thalia is a huge boost to the deck.
I’m not convinced that’s the case, however, because of how good she is against Bant Humans. She heavily punishes the deck’s greedy mana base and offers insurance against making blocks with creatures that come in off of Collected Company. If Thalia becomes ubiquitous, Bant’s mana-base may prove too much of a liability and it could be supplanted by faster aggressive decks with more streamlined mana.
GW Tokens has a much better mana-base than Bant Humans, so it isn’t quite as vulnerable to Thalia. However, it does depend on blocking to hold off aggressive strategies and it does have enough non-basic lands for an opposing Thalia to occasionally cause some embarrassment.
So, while Thalia is excellent in creature decks she’s also at her best against creature decks, making her the very definition of a cannibalistic card. Control decks that defend themselves with removal rather than blockers will have little or no trouble with Thalia. If creature decks run her to beat other creature decks then they will be opening the door for other strategies. If she ends up taking slots currently occupied by Tireless Tracker then that’s excellent news for grindy decks playing an attrition game.
Gisela, the Broken Blade
Flying is something of a mirror-breaker amidst Standard’s ground-based board stalls. 4/3 with first strike and lifelink is amazingly efficient, out-racing just about everything in Standard. Unforunately, three toughness is one short of what it needs to be maximally effective, because it can’t safely attack into five open mana and the threat of Archangel Avacyn, even with Dromoka’s Command in hand. So, while Gisela does offer a way of knocking over planeswalkers and winning races, she doesn’t quite break open the mirror match because she’s a riskier bet than Gideon in the four-drop slot. She’s also weak to Reflector Mage, so if Bant Collected Company Decks don’t get pushed out of the format, GW decks will probably wind up sticking to Gideon. If UW Spirits does become a major player then Gisela becomes a more temping option.
Gisela also has a meld ablitity, for what that’s worth. Gisela is quite easily playable on her own merit but the same can’t be said for Bruna, the Fading Light. Seven mana is just a little bit too expensive for most decks and if you’re going the route of ramp, there are better heavy hitters to top out with. If you’re already running a set of Gisela, however, it’ll be tempting to work in a copy or two of Bruna to give your deck some extra flexibility, because the monster they meld into will take over most games and that possibility adds some extra value.
Modern possibilities
Modern draws on an enormous card pool so new cards face a high barrier to entry into the format. Eldritch Moon has a few candidates worth testing though in all honesty I’m not that optimistic about their chances.
Bedlam Reveler
This card competes with the Delve creatures: Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler. Trouble is, the latter get a far larger discount. There aren’t many scenarios that will let you cast a Bedlam Reveller sooner than turn four and even turn four requires things to line up reasonably well, especially if you’re hoping to hold mana open on that turn.
On initial inspection, Bedlam Reveler doesn’t quite hold up. However, there are some upsides to it. The first is that it doesn’t use up your graveyard the way Delve does so it plays better in multiples and also lets you run it alongside other graveyard synergies. The second is that it refills your hand with fresh cards, which is just what you want after playing a flurry of spells in the early turns.
The most obvious home for Bedlam Reveler is in UR Delver decks, which will have the capacity to reliably power it out on turn 4 and also make rapid use of the cards it draws. It might be a shade slow for the style of game that deck is looking to play, so I would also consider it in decks that are heavy on hand disruption. Bedlam Reveller will be utterly backbreaking in games that turn into a top-deck war after a flurry of discard spells.
Eldritch Evolution
The spoiling of Eldritch Evolution precipitated a price spike and buyout of Allosaurus Rider, presumably because of the possibility of a turn 2 Griselbrand after a mana dork. Getting both in your hand along with two other green spells to discard is actually quite tough, however, so it remains to be seen how well that combo pans out. Eldritch Evolution could also see some action as more of a value card in the mould of Birthing Pod, but that’s also tricky because it’s a one-off effect which is, strictly speaking, card disadvantage.
Nahiri’s Wrath
“Your graveyard is a resource.” That’s the mantra of enough decks that Nahiri’s Wrath certainly merits a look. Clearing your opponent’s board is amazing upside for a discard outlet so this merits testing in Modern Grishoalbrand and Goryo’s Vengeance decks and perhaps in Dredge variants. If you want to go really deep you also get access to a wonky plan B that doesn’t use the graveyard: all you need is Boros Reckoner, Nahiri’s Wrath and 20 mana worth of cards in hand. I don’t think Boros Reckoner has quite enough utility in the format to get me interested in going that route but it might be a neat means of sidestepping graveyard hate after sideboarding.
Most overhyped cards
Now for the part of the article where I risk public embarrassment just to tear down total strangers for being wrong about cards. On second thought that’s not the best wording. This is the part of the article where I look out for my readers by helping them preserve their hard-earned cash. By tearing down total strangers for being wrong about cards. If you think I’m off-base with any of these or that I’ve missed anything really good, feel free to let me know in the comments and/or pre-order right here on Top Deck.
Tamiyo, Field Researcher
Tamiyo is currently pre-ordering for $35 on StarcityGames.com, tied with Gisela, the Broken Blade as the most expensive card in the set so I am clearly going against popular opinion here. I don’t have any particular reason for disliking Tamiyo; I just don’t see a good shell for her in Standard right now. She’s also pretty weak when you’re behind on the board, largely because sorcery-speed Frost Breath is way worse than actual Frost Breath on defence. When you tap out for a four-drop, you want it to be able to catch you up from behind and really, all Tamiyo does is buy you a little bit of time.
Grim Flayer
Smaller than Sylvan Advocate in the early game and then smaller than Sylvan Advocate in the late game. Green-Black also isn’t a colour combination doing all that well right now, so I just don’t see this making an impact right now. Maybe after rotation. I’ve also seen a couple of people talking it up for Modern play, which just seems silly. If you can cast this, you could be taking your pick between Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant. One of those will always be bigger than Grim Flayer, the other will get you cards more reliably.
Eldritch Evolution
I did mention this as worth testing in Modern but I don’t think the odds of it working out are high enough to justify its preorder price-tag of $13. Even if it does turn out to be good, you can expect that price to trend downward for a while anyway.
Tree of Perdition
Harmless Offering to hand over Demonic Pact isn’t the only combo to enter the format with the introduction of Eldritch Moon. Combining Tree of Perdition with Triskaidekaphobia can result in an immediate win when the stars align. This combo is just as soft to the prevalence of Dromoka’s Command but it also incidentally loses to an opponent able to adjust his or her life total at instant speed. The widespread use of painlands is particularly problematic but even Westvale Abbey can do the job in a pinch. So what we have here is not just a clunky combo that can’t win earlier than turn six, it’s a combo that can be answered by the most popular card in the format and randomly loses to lands that people are playing anyway.