Hello fellow fans of spoiler season and new cards! I hope your day is going well! Last week I was away at a work conference, so I created a Top Ten Charms of All Time that did include three Charms from New Capenna early prior to the full release of the spoiler, and today I've been back a few days from my work conference in Birmingham, Alabama.

Today I am beginning a series of Top Tens where I look at the best cards from the set for kitchen table formats like Commander, Type Four, Five Color, Highlander and multiplayer. This is a deep set! On spoiler release day (4/15) I copied over the image of every card from the set that I felt was pretty good and worth doing a deeper dive into in order from #1 on down, and then I waited until the 18^th to give myself some time to spend and then I looked at my list and massaged it and added and pulled cards. That's how I created these Top Tens from the newly released sets. Ready for my top cards over all from the set?

I got ya!

Honorable Mention #1 - Void Rend

Hitting at #12 is this powerful three-mana instant. Compare this to...removal like Vindicate that is pretty common at the kitchen table and in Commander. Vindicate will destroy any permanent including lands, but it's sorcery speed. With Blue we now have an instant, but in return, it cannot hit lands, which is fair by me. And then the Blue will add in something; it cannot be countered. Just like adding in Blue to Wrath of God made the uncounterable Supreme Verdict. This is a big addition to the removal canon since unlike the traditional spot removal in these colors (Pongify; Disenchant; Swords to Plowshares; Murder; Utter End) this cannot be countered. That's really strong, but the three colors required drops it down off my Top Ten list proper to #12 overall. Great removal option! (It's also really strong in Type Four where you have tons of counters and can only cast one/spell per turn and this removal cannot be countered back).

Honorable Mention #2 - Titan of Industry

For seven mana you net a 7/7 reach and trampler, nice. And then you net, on arrival to the battlefield, a Command trigger - you get four options and you can choose two. The first option is a Naturalize effect, which is nice removal on a stick. The second option is to gain 5 life, which is probably the least likely to be used outside of life gain shells. There are Selesnya and Golgari Life Gain Commanders that could use life gain and removal on a stick. The third ability is to crap out a 4/4 Rhino warrior which is 11/11 for 7 mana, and that's pretty likely in kitchen table play. The final ability is to slot a shield counter onto a creature you control, like the Titan of Industry on a naked board or your Commander. Base line in Commander and other multiplayer formats I see this choosing the removal option and the token maker, which is a nice combo for one card. Good stuff to see here, but 7 mana in modern Commander is harder to make work, hence it hits here at the #11 spot.

What's next?

#10. The Ascendancy Cycle

Yup! Five cards for the win! Each of these is a three mana rare enchantments gives you cool abilities that fit the mechanics of that Family's quite ably. Let's look at them!

Brokers Ascendancy during your end step will place loyalty counters on your planeswalkers and +1/+1 counters on your dorks so it feels like several Ajanis. You should get one trigger in before sorcery speed removal or untapping happens, and this works well in Bant Superfriends, Bant +1/+1 counters, or a key role in the four color Atraxa, Praetors' Voice which can be both at the same time.

Cabaretti Ascendancy is cool since, in your upkeep, you can draw the top card of your library if it's a creature or a planeswalker. Good for Naya which really loves creatures and card flow in those colors, and you could really use in it Commander for those cards like Midrange or Big Stuff Matters. Good!

Maestros Ascendancy is a fun Grixis colored option that will, anytime on your turn, let you cast an instant or a sorcery from your graveayrd by sacrficing a dork in additon to it's other costs, which is pretty cool from where I am sitting. Sacrifices for these colors are great ways of starting triggers like Blood Artist and more instants/sorceries wil care about Guttersnipes, and each are cool ways to build your Grixis deck in Commander.

Obscura Ascendancy ramps up soul counters over time as long as you cast a spell equal to the soul counter count plus 1, you net a cool 2/2 White Spirit with flying for your troubles. And then it's a triple Glorious Anthem for Spirits only if you have five soul counters here so that's a pretty nice reward for playing it's soul counter game.

The final Ascendancy is the Riveteers Ascendancy! For Jund, once per turn, when you sacrifice a dork, you can get, for free, a dork with a lesser cost from your graveyard to the battlefield for free. It's very strong with the sacrifice theme of that color combo in formats like Commander and friends. Love it a lot here!

#9. Cut Your Losses

The problem with Mill as a win-con is that in Commander and other multiplayer formats, graveyard abuse is rife, and you could hand your foe resources like flashback instants and sorceries or creatures that can self-recur like Reassembling Skeleton or adding more recurison options for that Living Death in their hand. That's why I have enjoyed the move to exile mill in recent sets, but this is not going in the right direction. Milling half of a library is much stronger in Five Color's 300 card format or Commander's 100 than in 60-card formats like Standard, but later on you really do want things that can close out.

This can be casualty sacrifice at least a 2/1 to hit two players in multiplayer or to punish a bigger deck game like Five Color and Commander. You can also send one at you to self-mill a lot for your own graveyard synergies while also hitting your foe once for a big fat mill as well following by exiling removal like Nihil Spellbomb or Bojuka Bog.I love this with the Incarnation cycle like Anger, Wonder, Glory and Genesis. Especially Genesis. Also, the legendary lands that tap to put that style of permanent from your graveyard to the top of your library (Academy Ruins, et. all). Also note that casualty will trigger your magecraft triggers twice since you'll get the copied trigger.

#8. Vivien on the Hunt

As you see, this is a six-mana version of our awesome Vivien. She arrives with a bit low 4 loyalty, but she has two positive abilities. The first is +2 and lets you sacrifice a dork to search up a creature with a +1 mana value and slam it onto your battlefield - nice growing over time like a Birthing Pod. It's very powerful in a deck that cares, and you can grow your battlefield over time from a 3-drop Reclamation Sage to a Timeless Witness then an Acidic Slime then a game-winning Carnage Tyrant. It's great after mass removal like Damnation or Akroma's Vengeance and then turn one dork into a bunch of triggers and then game winners without committing additional resources. Her +1 can mill 5 and then toss any number of dorks milled that way into your hand, great card flow and works best in a deck dense in creatures just like her +2. Good synergy. While she lacks an ultimate, you can -1 her to make a 4/4 green Rhino Warrior dork and that can block attacks on her and swing. She's very synergetic!

#7. Cut of(f) the Profits

I hate the name of this card since it will be confused with "Cut off the Profits." This strong X spell card drawing spell is quite good, as it's basically a Braingeyser or Mind Spring in mono-Black. You can Fork this spell for another slate of card drawing fun times by sacrificing a dork with a power of at least three, quite easily in Black in casual town. This is a powerful card drawing option moving forward to any Black Commander brew and really love it with Commanders with enough power to sacrifice.

#6. Ob Nixilis, the Adversary

Our highest-scoring planeswalker and black card and card outside of the top five proper is this version of Nixilis! We've added a color to the previously mono-Black guy. As you cast this you can sacrifice a dork you control to make a nonlegendary copy of this with loyalty equal to its power, and that's pretty good for the cause. You can +1 him to force your foes to lose 2 life unless they discard a card, and in Commander that's likely to be the two life. Since you could have a 1 loyalty Obby if you sacrificed an early Rakdos colored two-drop like Dockside Extortionist or Burglar Rat.

Then you +1 it and force a life loss of 4 instead of 2. If you control a Devil/Demon dork you can gain 2 life each activation which suggest a Demon/Devil brew in Rakdos colors although that's not needed since you can -2 one of your Obbies to make a 1/1 Devil token. I prefer to just lean on the +1 over and over again until both are answered, and you could have forced your foes to lose 10-14 life each before they are both answered, and I don't need to have wasted time frumping around with tokens. I really like this in midrange brews where you have ETB dorks to sacrifice to the Rakdos colored Obby. Good walker of the planes!

Top Five Time? Okay!

#5. Urabrask, Heretic Praetor

Let's start our Top Five with this five-drop 4/4 haster. On curve. On your upkeep you get a free exile/draw card if you cast it this turn, which is brilliant card flow for building a deck around at the kitchen table. Then you can force each foe to exile-draw their first card drawn in their draw step which forces them to play catch up and really hurts control decks that flip over stuff like Counterspell. Urabrask is also a legendary to build a Commander deck around, which works well for your deck building needs. Nice!

#4. Arcane Bombardment

Three Red(ish) mythic cards in a row baby! This fun mythic enchantment is a bit pricey at six mana, but it's pretty powerful at the kitchen table. As you cast your first instant/sorcery each turn, you can exile a random one from that graveyard of yours and copy it, and then you can keep on copying it as you cast more and more instants and sorceries and exiling more options at random. That's a lot of power over time, and there is no mana or other costs involved save for the initial six needed for this enchantment. I also think this is one of the best cards for Type Four in this set. As you can see, this format has all of the mana you need but just one spell cast per turn, so only copying one per turn won't be a restriction, and getting the copies for free each turn is big value. Good stuff for the win-tough!

#3. Bootleggers' Stash

This is also a six-mana spell. You can tap your lands to make Treasure tokens, and that's a very powerful storage of mana until later. This is very powerful in ramp decks to store up unused mana at the end of a foe's turn, and then untap and keep on like Simic Ramp. It's also very powerful in control decks that save their mana for counters or other instant responses like Rout and Cyclonic Rift and then, when they aren't needed, they can tap for mana storage. If all this card did was just read: "Lands you control have 'Tap: make a mana of any color," it would hit a few slots back on the next list, but it breaks defensively minded brews since they aren't punished for not using their mana each turn since they can just tap it for Treasures.

#2. An Offer You Can't Refuse

If we didn't have the megapowerful land cycle hitting at the top spot, then this would have been a clear #1. For 1 mana, you can, at instant speed, Negate, and then give them two Treasures. Compare this card to the heavily played Swan Song that counters enchantments, sorceries and instants but not artifacts and planeswalkers. And it gives the countered spell owner a 2/2 flying Bird token to swing for a few turns. In Commander it is played in 115,630 decks, or in 21% of blue decks! Nasty! It is the sixth-most played Blue card and hitting at #5 is...Negate proper...which this better than since it's cheaper. It'll be heavily played in other formats as well, sure, but this is a Commander staple.

#1. The Three Land Types Cycling Cycle

Since they aren't called "Triomes" anymore I don't know what to call this cycle of the triple land counting mana lands that cycle. Anyways, they are clearly my #1. They cycle so if you draw them late in a game after your mana is set you can cycle them for another chance around the bin. You can drop them tapped to tap for three colors of mana which is worth it. They count as three basic land types for things like Farseek and Polluted Delta that care. There is nothing here that doesn't matter or that sucks, we'll like them the same as the pervious cycle!

And there we are! What did you think of my Top Ten? Anything you are excited to play or anything that I missed? Just let me know and have an awesome day!