White
Valor's Flagship
If you play Premodern (or you were just playing back around 2003 or 2004) you know the card Decree of Justice.
Decree of Justice has always had a special place in my heart.
My friend Brian Kibler (who you might have heard of) was a two-time Pro Tour Champion before becoming a long-haired Commander influencer. Back when Kibs was primarily a competitive player he once ran the veritable tables with a Decree of Justice deck I had made, making Top 8 of the US National Championship that year.
G/W Control | Brian Kibler, 2004 US Nationals
- Creatures (4)
- 4 Eternal Dragon
- Instants (18)
- 2 Gilded Light
- 4 Oxidize
- 4 Pulse of the Fields
- 4 Renewed Faith
- 4 Wing Shards
- Sorceries (11)
- 3 Decree of Justice
- 4 Akroma's Vengeance
- 4 Wrath of God
- Lands (27)
- 3 Forest
- 12 Plains
- 4 Elfhame Palace
- 4 Temple of the False God
- 4 Windswept Heath
- Sideboard (15)
- 2 Darksteel Colossus
- 2 Duplicant
- 2 Mindslaver
- 4 Purge
- 2 Reap and Sow
- 3 Tooth and Nail
Valor's Flagship has very deliberate Decree of Justice DNA. In fact, the 2025 version will probably work out a little better functionally (the cycling ability is a little less flexible, but its downside won't come up that often). Back in 2004 we were happy with just the 1/1s; but Valor's Flagship gives you Pilots with a little more text.
In the abstract I don't know that this would matter that often, but the front side of this card is in fact a giant Vehicle with lifelink, so you might actually want to cast, crew, and attack with it... And the Pilots from the back side can help you out with that, even if you want to play a deck that doesn't have a lot of creatures... or maybe any creatures!
I don't think players should be afraid of playing three or four copies of Valor's Flagship because, even though it is both expensive and Legendary, you're going to be discarding it far more often than you will be casting it.
This card lets control mages leave their mana open, helps smooth mana draws early, gives them something (potentially big) to do when they're flooded (while drawing out of that flood), and ambushes attackers. A new spin on a powerful standout... That just happens to play nicely with Caretaker's Talent.
Spectacular Pileup
I love everything about this card. This card is just incredible.
There is already one hell of a card in Standard called Sunfall. It's super good to the point of being unassailable. The nice people in Renton, WA have tried to give us an uber-flexible sweeper in Final Showdown; and the four-mana reprint version in Day of Judgment. Neither has really done much in the way of displacing Sunfall.
Spectacular Pileup will.
Same mana as Sunfall. No exile; but removing indestructible goes most of the way on that functionality... Despite the enormous sizes you sometimes get on your Incubator, it's shocking how often the body-in-waiting just doesn't matter.
But cycling?
The real problem with Sunfall is just drawing it against a control deck where it has little-to-no text. I can't wait to put this into the graveyard, one way or the other.
Blue
Spell Pierce
I don't know what to say. I just like Spell Pierce more than stuff like a take on Birthing Pod or even a Mahamoti Djinn over two bodies for four mana (that might draw some extra cards). I'm pretty confident that this card is going to matter. It's opportunistic, people are going to have to respect that it exists, and the price is right.
Bounce Off
Speaking of the price being right, I had to read and re-read this card three times. Are you sure it's not a sorcery or something? Nope. Not a sorcery.
Straight up just better than Unsummon. I had just written an article about Unsummon being an important upgrade in Standard. Hard to imagine Bounce Off not seeing some starting sixties considering it is strictly better than the card that was already competing with the fish-making and surveilling options. The "vehicle" text is there at least somewhat for Limited, but if Vehicles are important in Standard, Bounce Off is going to have no shortage of things to do.
Red
Chandra, Spark Hunter
I've never actually sat through the highly influential anime Akira, but I've seen its famous motorcycle shot. And so have you, though dozens and dozens of homages over the years.
... Just wanted to point out that Chandra, Spark Hunter is the nth installment of that motorcycle shot, this time on a heck of a Magic: The Gathering card.
There is a fair amount going on with this card, but I think that the center square is that [0] ability.
Chandra Planeswalkers tend to have some ability to draw extra cards, and that's what [0] here is... The extra card is just always a 3/2 vehicle.
On many Planeswalkers you would then have to figure out what you would do with some pretty inflexible material, but Chandra's first line solves that for you. As long as you activate [0] pre-combat, you can attack with it that turn! The absolute bottom of Chandra is going to be an effective 3/2 haste for ; which isn't great in 2025, but they actually still have to deal with the Planeswalker cardboard. And even if they do, you keep the 3/2 in kind of brick form.
The [+2] ability isn't super exciting to me, but in a long game you're likely to have a bunch of random artifacts lying around. If you're simply playing against a White deck, you might have some Maps, etc. Or an extra land in hand when you need some action. Heck, if Chandra herself stuck around long enough, you'll probably have a bunch of 3/2 vehicles with no one to crew them.
The cutest thing about the [-7] Ultimate is that at some point (maybe even on a second Chandra), you're spitting out 3/2 vehicles that are pinging for three before getting animated on the attack. Everyone is going from kind of a Talruum Minotaur to kind of a cross between a Ghitu Slinger and a Flametongue Kavu. The real problem here is that the way you get to [-7] is by using the [+2] multiple times and I think it's more likely you're just accumulating vehicles.
Count on Luck
This is my favorite card in the set.
The personal Howling Mine has been an aspiration for mages, not just Red mages, for literally thirty years.
There are some conditions to this experience. Like you need to be able to make . That kind of narrows the type of deck that can get in on the personal Howling Mine here; but in my opinion the best proxy we've had previously was Koth, Fire of Resistance (which also demanded a lot of
- at least in your library - and was more mana).
The funny thing about this card is that you don't really have to count much on luck at all. Unless you're playing a lot of functional cycling cards like Valor's Flagship the text on Count on Luck is mostly just drawing the card.
Other takes (like on certain Chandra Planeswalkers) might not have let you play a land for instance; Count on Luck lets you play the land. Unlike Experimental Frenzy you get to keep your draw. You don't have to solve a puzzle sub-game or discard your hand to use this. You just need to be able to make .
The biggest knock on this card is that you mostly have to use the card this turn. So, if you flip over a particular kind of removal and you don't have a target for it, you don't get that function this turn. But you're not losing much; and in either a burn-type or a grinding strategy (maybe post-sideboard) the amount of advantage Count on Luck gives you over time is mostly going to erase the need for luck.
Skycrash
Speaking of a narrow kind of removal let me tell you about Skycrash.
It's super ironic that this card comes up right after my 273 words on Count on Luck, because if you flipped this over, you also would not be able to cycle if it Skycrash had no good target.
But think about the other things that it offers.
First of all, the price is right. No, not for the Shatter. The Shatter is fine. The cycling is nicely aggressive at . Osyp Lebedowicz once tried to convince me that Akroma's Blessing was a good card.
Shaking My Head, am I right?
But he won a Pro Tour with it so what do I know? I know that the card's cycling was a mere , so that cost was a major factor in it being a four-of in his PT-winning deck.
The ability to get rid of Skycrash for the low low price of is going to let some decks main artifact removal without much fear of a dead card being stuck in hand. As a sideboard card it's fine. Not super high impact for a sideboard card, but at least it can help you get your even higher impact sideboard cards in a pinch.
Quag Feast
Sorcery, huh?
This card is going to be in the mix. You have Nowhere to Run that doesn't kill big things; Go for the Throat that doesn't kill artifacts; and Shoot the Sheriff that only kills good guys.
Quag Feast is unique in this mix in that it's a rare... and it's not spectacular on turn two. It's probably mostly functional on turn two, but there are some question marks.
The reasons this card is potentially so good are twofold: 1) the flexibility. Sometimes you need to kill a Planeswalker. The nice people in Renton, WA will have us believing that you might also have to kill a vehicle, and if that's true Quag Feast is going to be a heck of a lot more valuable than Go for the Throat in that metagame. 2) The milling is a little downside... But it's also upside.
A few weeks ago we looked at a deck with 4x Overwhelming Remorse. The right deck is going to be able to use Quag Feast with the same disregard for downside as a deck that can cast Overwhelming Remorse... But Quag Feast also makes your next Quag Feast a little better if that makes any sense.
You're going to have a lot of unhappy opponents when your third land is a Fabled Passage that doesn't enter untapped but gives you the critical card in graveyard to turn on the Quag Feast that flips over Atraxa when you have Zombify and your fourth land in hand. "A lot" for sure.
Ancient Vendetta
First of all, when they printed this:
... It was rare.
Second, I was at the Pro Tour covering the first round match where one PT Champion cast Cranial Extraction on the other one, the cast-ee complained the card wasn't any good... And had to lose three copies of his key card that were already in hand. So, it seemed pretty good to me.
I was always super high on Cranial Extraction and had versions of it in a lot of my highest performing decks of its era, including Josh Ravitz's Red control from US Nationals or Julian Levin's States winner.
[deck from https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/new-york-state-championship-report-finalist-kind-of/]
Mono-Blue Control | Michael Flores, 2nd Place New York States 2005
- Creatures (10)
- 3 Keiga, the Tide Star
- 3 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 4 Jushi Apprentice
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Threads of Disloyalty
- Lands (25)
- 10 Island
- 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
- 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
- 1 Miren, the Moaning Well
- 1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
- 1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
- 2 Dimir Aqueduct
- 4 Quicksand
- 4 Watery Grave
- Sideboard (15)
- 1 Dimir Aqueduct
- 4 Drift of Phantasms
- 3 Cranial Extraction
- 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 4 Execute
- 2 Rewind
Ancient Vendetta is subtly different, and I think, quite a bit better than Cranial Extraction.
First of all, this is the old templating. So, if I say Atraxa and you are holding three copies of Atraxa you just lose them; you don't get to now draw three. That's the PT Champ on PT Champ violence I'm looking four. Four.
Secondly, unlike Cranial Extraction, you can name land. The four-max templating is going to keep you from extracting 20 Forests from some hapless Elves mage, but I think that the fact that you might be able to get this under something like a Lotus Field or Fountainport is going to make life much more interesting than an uncommon usually gets.
Green
March of the World Ooze
This is kind of a weird, persistent, Overrun with upside.
You're going to just kill them the turn you cast this. But if you don't, the fact that it becomes this annoying grinding card is kind of hilarious. Sure, they Wrath'd you. But now they can't Counter you? Secret of the Ooze, right?
Webstrike Elite
What has the world come to that I don't care about the 3/3 for two aspect of this card? Yeah, yeah, yeah it also has sneaky Reach.
Agonasaur Rex
When evaluating what will be the last card on this early list, I was kind of wondering what kind of dinosaurs might be available to make dino-life interesting.
This card is beyond just interesting.
On one hand it's like "how big do we have to make a 5-drop for people to play it, provided nothing happens when it comes into play"? 8/8 trample is an interesting place to start. I'm sure that I will be taking 7 from Agonasaur Rex as it barrels over one of my hapless Rabbit tokens, soon.
But as with many cards on this list, the cycling ability is what demands the second look. It's expensive. to draw a card is a weird fail state on a giant monster this efficient, but will be welcome when an 8/8 just isn't going to keep you in the game.
But what might keep you in it? What might take your opponent out of it? Indestructible on a key creature the opponent is trying to destroy; trample on one that might win the game that turn. +2/+2 doesn't make the rate suddenly cheap or anything, but it sure sweetens the pot when you remember that the cycling ability can't easily be countered AND you're drawing a card, to boot.
Regal Imperiosaur
So, it's late fall 2009 and my friend Andre Coimbra calls me up and asks if I have a sweet deck list.
I have the best deck list in fact. I am "100% sure" it is the best deck list.
Okay sure, says Andre; if you're "100%" sure. I am; and he runs one of one; and wins the World Championship.
Naya Lightsaber | Andre Coimbra, 1st Place Worlds 2009
- Creatures (25)
- 1 Scute Mob
- 4 Baneslayer Angel
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Woolly Thoctar
- Planeswalkers (3)
- 3 Ajani Vengeant
- Instants (8)
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Path to Exile
- Lands (24)
- 4 Forest
- 3 Mountain
- 4 Plains
- 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
- 4 Arid Mesa
- 4 Rootbound Crag
- 4 Sunpetal Grove
- Sideboard (15)
- 1 Ajani Vengeant
- 2 Burst Lightning
- 4 Celestial Purge
- 4 Goblin Ruinblaster
- 4 Great Sable Stag
The concept I built my deck around was a non-concept. I had been trying to make all kinds of Planeswalkers and synergies and combos work. What if I just put the best cards in? The individually best cards? Baneslayer Angel was at the top of my personal list of cards for Standard. Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile were clearly the best removal. The format essentially revolved around Bloodbraid Elf. Ranger of Eos was like doubling my Bloodbraid Elf count! I could out-Jund Jund! I had to add some stuff to make Ranger of Eos actually good. Scute Mob became the sole concession to synergy; the late-game killer for one.
And then there was this guy:
To be clear, a 5/4 in three colors was so good on rate, I had short-listed it as one of "the best cards" to the point that it won the World Championship. It was about the least exciting thing to Bloodbraid Elf into... But also more than enough to win the game.
Again to be clear, this was a 5/4 for three. Vanilla. No other abilities.
How could I not pick Regal Imperiosaur as my 13th favorite card? It's better in every way... And might just be the Tribal Crusade that Dinos are looking for.
LOVE
MIKE