Playtest 1 Review
Things I’m happy with:
3 of each common appears to be the right number for redundancy without enabling the decks that I don’t want to see with 5+ of the same card
2 of each uncommon gives enough that each archetype should have one floating around in the pool and possibly two
There were enough cards in the Dimir colors to build two similar decks without one being ridiculously overpowered
No mythics actually felt right so I’m actually just going to leave them out for now
Dream Fracture was a huge blowout
Favored Winds is a huge beating with the right support
Stronghold Discipline was surprisingly effective against my Azorius flyers/tokens deck
Academy Researchers was amazing in the Dimir deck
The Will of the Council cards were always fun to resolve even if they went against what you wanted
Things I’m not happy with:
Reya Dawnbringer came down far too late to be relevant which is not what I want to see out of rares
Stifle and Misdirection were both disappointing because of the number cards with a reduced
Magus of the Mirror is too slow to be interesting
Exploration sat in the sideboard because you have to be deep in blue for it to be relevant due to not having the card flow
Reflecting Pool doesn’t fix mana the way I would like for a rare
I'm pretty sure a lot of the reprint rares I'm just going to swap out. It seems like a lot of them were selected for making reprints more available rather than them being particularly relevant. I want the rares to be things that break stalemates to avoid massive board stalls and can push things to a conclusion.
Reprint rares:
(Out) Reya Dawnbringer - too expensive and too slow, would be best as a reanimation target
(In) Rout - a good sweeper is what I want to see as a rare
(Out) Misdirection - not enough single target things to make it worth playing
(Out) Stifle - multiplayer is not conducive to the tempo plays Stifle is best with
(In) Ill-Gotten Gains - was very cool when it was played; lots of power but politically charged
(Out) Magus of the Mirror - really needs to be usable any time, the upkeep restriction makes it incredibly hard to use
(In) Heartless Hidetsugu - does a great job of putting people on a clock and can be very relevant for multiple archetypes
(On the fence) Sulfuric Vortex - not sure about this one yet, need to see someone play it effectively as several of the red decks are slower
(Out) Exploration - only good with a ton of blue cards to keep the lands flowing, would rather just have a more universally effective card
(In) Terastodon - great at dealing with the artifacts and enchantments that enable a lot of shenanigans and has plenty of political implications
(In) Wolfbriar Elemental - great bomb that can break the game open late or catch you up
(In) Basandra, Battle Seraph - very solid stall breaker and large evasive body
(In) Decimate - 4 for 1s are exactly the kind of removal needed most of the time
(In) Dimir Doppleganger - plays exceptionally well in the Dimir deck as a ever-changing threat depending on what they’ve played so far
(On the fence) Edric, Spymaster of Trest - the Simic deck really isn’t trying to go wide and it’s not a great political deck, but he might still make the cut depending on what I decide to do with the archetype
(In) Spiritmonger - Golgari desperately needs big beater to finish out the game after all the attrition and Spiritmonger is a nice balanced way to handle it
(On the fence) Altar of Dementia - In theory it’s cool because it’s a free sac outlet, but really none of the archetypes have a good way to take advantage of it
(On the fence) Deathrender - A moderate power and toughness boost with the potential for shenanigans
Still working on what I want to put in, but I’m fairly sure I want to put in a set of shard colored uncommons to encourage a 2 color deck with a splash or even a 3 color deck, but I don’t want to push too hard because I’ll have to add more color fixing at common.









