The Best Cards (In the 99) from Outlaws of Thunder Junction

Rachel Weeks

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Greetings, humans. You have entered the command zone, your destination for all aspects of Elder Dragon Highlander. Enjoy your stay. Welcome back, everybody. This is another episode of the Command Zone podcast.

I'm your host, Rachel Weeks. Yee haw. Josh Lee Kwai. This is the last OTJ episode. Already we got there.

We reached the end of the line. The funny thing is, I don't have a. We're saying that before even the first ones really come out. Yeah, I know. The reveal came out today.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

We want to make sure all of this is getting to you in plenty of time. We're going to be talking about outlaws of Thunder Junction. There's only one thing left to talk about. It's the cards that go in the 99. We're going to be talking about all of the hot new tech from this set.

It's got outlaws and mounts and treasures and crimes. And we're going to talk about the cards that you need to know to put in your decks or just so you're familiar when you play against them. Yeah, a lot of cool stuff in this set. I agree. I agree.

There's very cool flavor stuff. There's a brand new kicker version, which is fun and lots to pick up, especially if you're in ponies like me. Yeah, lots to talk about. Lots to pick up. I like that.

Josh Lee Kwai

That's a nice segue right into cardkingdom.com command. That's the best place to go to pick up your magic singles product, anything at all. If you want to get your hands on these Thunder junction cards, you want the precons, you want, you want a draft day, you want the play boosters, or maybe you want to get fancy versions of the cards and the collector boosters. You can get all that at card game.com command. Or if you want to build a new deck around one of these new legendary creatures, you can get all the cards that would go in that deck from magic sets of the past.

Card Kingdom has a huge inventory, so they've got the card you're looking for and the condition you're looking for, and it all comes in one convenient package all at once to your doorstep. So you're ready to just leave it up and play it right away. You don't wait for five or six of the packages to sort of trickle in over time. So again, cardgam.com command the best place to go to get your magic product. And once those cards are in your hand, you're going to need to protect them, organize them, keep them pretty.

Rachel Weeks

Go to ultrapro.com command. Pick up all of the magic accessories that you need as a magic player. Pick up some sleeves, a play mat, deck boxes, binders, storage, dice. There's a ton of sweet accessories over on Ultra Pro. I like to swing by and see what's on sale because they always have great flash sales.

So when I'm brewing or I know that I've got a number of commanders and I'm excited to come down the pipeline, I keep an eye on Ultra pro so I can pick up all of the deck boxes and all of the sleeves that I need in one place while they're on sale. And you can stay up to date on all of that by signing up for the Ultra Pro newsletter. You know that you're always gonna need more storage. You know that you're always gonna need another binder. So it's nice when you know that there are regular enough sales that you can pick up all of the stuff that you know and trust in one place.

Plus, you're throwing a little bit of extra money our way, which helps a lot. Again, ultrapro.com command. And of course, the final way to support all of our content is directly. If you go to patreon.com commandzone, patrons get all kinds of perks. There's a discord where they get to chat with Rachel, Jimmy, myself, our whole team, we're on there each and every day.

Josh Lee Kwai

Also, patrons get access to extra turns and game nights earlier than the general public. And of course, without ads. Yeah, with no ads. And of course, the biggest perk, we shout out one lucky patron every single episode. And this episode is dedicated to Timothy Melvin.

Timothy, you rock. You definitely rock. All right, let's get into these. In the 99 cards. Yeah, we've pulled a good list of them this time.

Rachel Weeks

Of course, we can't talk about all of the cards in the set. Not all of them are going to be relevant to commander. There are some very narrow cards that came out in the variety of products associated with Thunder Junction, which we'll talk about. So we're not going to talk about the ones that are for very specific strategies like deserts, or if they're like outlaw specific cards. There are some very good cards, but if you're building that kind of deck, you probably know that they're already good in your deck.

So we'll talk about the ones that are a little bit harder to evaluate. Or might be just more broad in their application. We don't need to tell you like, hey, put the good one plus one counter cards in your counter deck. Yeah, these are a little bit trickier and a little bit more generically powerful, and there are a lot of them in this set. We're going to be talking about all of the cards that can go in the 99 from the commander decks, from the main set, from the big score, which is their supplemental epilogue set.

We're not going to be covering reprints or anything like that. Cause you already know if those cards are good. But there are three different products, and. Hopefully we'll try and name what product. Where you can find them because we know it's not particularly intuitive.

Josh Lee Kwai

And if you go on card Kingdom, it makes it easy. You just search for the name of card and you don't have to care where. It doesn't matter what set it's from. But if you want to pick up a precon, we'll tell you what precon. It comes in like this first one, which comes in the desert bloom.

Rachel Weeks

Commander Deck. This is the NIA deserts one. It's angel of Indemnity six mana five and a wight for a five five flying lifelink. Angel warrior. When angel of indemnity enters the battlefield, return target permanent with mana value four or less from your graveyard to the battlefield.

And it also has encore six white, white. If you haven't played with encore, it says, exile this card from your graveyard. For each opponent, create a token copy that. Attacks that opponent this turn. If able, they gain haste, sacrifice them at the beginning of the next end.

Step activate only as a sorcery. So this is like a sun tightening effect. Yeah, it's very similar. Right? It's just one more.

Josh Lee Kwai

I almost said CMC. Mana value. Mana value. Yeah. Yeah.

But it doesn't trigger on the attack only. It triggers on the ETB. Right. It's also on a much more relevant body. Sun Titan's a six six with vigilance.

Rachel Weeks

This is a five five flying lifelink, which is huge life swing. And it's way, way easier to just get relevant attacks out of it sometimes. I've had a sun Titan, and I finally do get that attack. Like I have lightning greaves or something like that. Yeah.

And you're gonna die. It's gonna die in combat. Yeah. And they wanna kill it. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

But it's just you can almost always find a opponent that's open to a flyer, especially a large flyer. Yeah. So, yeah, decent chance that this sticks around and matters. Definitely your play style, Rachel. To have a big five five flyer out there, that's just, like, killing me slowly.

Rachel Weeks

Five five flying lifelink. That's my bread and butter right there. They're like, that is such a pain in the butt. How is your life total? Yeah, how's your life total?

60? I don't know. I hit you three times. I think this card's really sweet. Notably, I think it will replace sun titan for me, even without the attack, because that encore is so good.

And it's very unlikely that you untap with Suntitan, where you get to attack. So you get to play this, you get a bigger thing, and then in the late game, after you get board wiped or something like that, you can pay eight, reanimate three five fives flying with Lifelink, and then three relevant permanents from your graveyard with four mana value or less, that's just a huge swing post board wipe, which is exactly what I want out of my white aggressive. Like, if there's a board wipe, you have nothing on board. Somebody plays this, gains 15 life deals, 15 damage, encores it. Yeah.

And then brings four bodies back. You're like, I wasn't ready. It's pretty great. It's easier to cast than Sun Titan, too. It's only one white.

That, too. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you were sort of predicting or analyzing how many things you get back out of the graveyard with a sun Titan, on average, it's probably, like, you know, 4.2 mana worth of stuff. Right?

Josh Lee Kwai

One, you get its trigger, like, one and a half times, maybe. On average, angel of indemnity, I bet, is going to be quite a bit higher because maybe you won't on card every game, but when you do, that's going to be three things. And I've never been in a game where a sun Titan came down and attacked three times. Yeah, that's not. Unless it's in a crazy blink deck.

Rachel Weeks

It just doesn't seem like it. If it ever did that, I think everybody died by the second one, because you would have to be in such a commanding position that you attacked with a sun titan, then attacked again, then attacked with it again, like, you had to have won that game already. Yeah. So angel indemnity, the times you do that is going to make up for the times that you don't above and beyond Sun Titan. So I do think, yeah, it's just going to end up being like, you get more stuff back from it.

Josh Lee Kwai

So. And the life swing is not nothing, like you said, especially on that encore, that's a 15 point swing. We've all been in a lot of games where if we could just gain a couple of life, we would probably win or be able to stabilize or not die, get one more turn. So this being able to give you that. Yeah, I think it's very strong.

Rachel Weeks

I think a lot of people are gonna look at that encore and be like, eight is too much, and eight's a lot. But I think this card is for that turn. And you don't feel bad tapping out for an eight thing that you know is gonna get three things back from the battlefield. Yeah. Honestly, even if it just gets three lands, it sets you up so well to recover from a board wipe, even if that's all you got.

Josh Lee Kwai

And hopefully you get better than that, obviously. But that just says, oh, my next turn. Instead of having eight mana, I have eleven mana. You know, it's a total like that. And I'd say that's the floor for what you could expect to get.

I often get a land with Suntitan when the first time it comes out, but not always. But yeah, since there's probably been a boardwalk or something that killed this, there's probably more stuff in your yard. And the fact that it can get back slightly bigger things is then therefore relevant at that moment in time, too. So the difference between three and four in commander is huge. Four drops are in white.

Rachel Weeks

That's your draw. Engines are at four drop drops most of the time. Right. You can get back the new trouble in pairs. You can get back Mangara.

You could get back. Smothering tide. Smothering tide. Harmonicon. Hugely powerful cards.

Panharmonicon. You get it back. It doesn't quite work. But you get two other things that have etbs. There you go.

I play Marshall's anthem in my white. No, no. You play angel of indemnity. Get back to the Panharmonicon. There you go.

That board wipe. And then you encore or sack it and just do that. Yeah. I'd like to get six things back, please. Pretty sweet.

Pretty sweet. I play Marshall's anthem in my white decks. And that's four mana and two to multikick. That's eight mana to get two things back. And this is eight mana to get three things back on a better body.

So I think this card's sweet. I'm excited about it. Yeah. Funny that it's in the desert deck. I'm not sure how good it is in the desert deck.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know. I don't know. They had to put the card somewhere.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. At some points, I think they're just like, dart at the wall. Where does this go? Yeah, it's white. Goes in that one.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. Okay. You wanna read this next card? All right. The next card is called Annie joins up.

It is one and Nya. So one, a red, a green, and a white. Four mana total for a legendary enchantment. When Annie joins up, enters the battlefield, it deals five damage to target creature or planeswalker and opponent controls, and then has a static ability. Says if a triggered ability of a legendary creature, you control triggers that ability, triggers an additional time.

Rachel Weeks

That's their favorite text lately. As that ability triggers an additional time. Yeah. It is roaming throne for legendaries. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Legendary creatures. Right. Because. Yeah. It wouldn't obviously trigger your, I don't know, chain veil or something.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. I mean, if this triggered legendary permanence, it would come in and deal five damage to two things. That's true. It triggered itself. Okay.

Yep. That's why they didn't do that. Also because broken four mana killed two huge things. Sounds really powerful. I do think that's kind of one of the things that makes this really good is the fact that, like, we're used to getting panharmonic on.

Josh Lee Kwai

Speaking of which. Is a thing that kind of doubles parallel lives, annoying procession type of stuff. That is a setup card that says successive things you do later on down the line will now be amplified. But usually those things don't also do a thing when they come in. We call them do nothings.

Right. Yeah. Cause they don't do anything until you do something else. Right. This is not a do nothing, though.

This is a removal spell. Yep. Not costed, but still a removal spell. We'll kill almost every commander you're gonna play against. Right.

Five mana and then sits there and has a very relevant. I mean, extremely relevant. Cause we know all these cards get played ability. I mean, this is the kind of thing that I really like, that they limited it to NyA. Cause it's roaming throne, but it's more controlled where we're not gonna see it in every game.

If this was monocolored or colorless, it'd be. You'd see it all the time, and it would be extremely broken. Yeah. But even in Nya, there's some really powerful commanders that this goes in. Basically every NYA commander you can think of.

Rachel Weeks

There's one in particular we've been talking about, and seeing people talk about a lot lately is Voya. Of course. Oh, my God. It doubles the ward. It doubles the attack.

Josh Lee Kwai

Cause that card needed to be better. Yeah. It also curves under Voya, so you can play this into it. One I thought about. Cause I had an atla deck.

Rachel Weeks

Is Atla Polani? Cause now all of your eggs, when your eggs die, they trigger atla twice. Yeah. It doesn't double the creation of the eggs, but it doubles when the eggs get cracked. Right.

Yeah. You get two things. Yeah. I would hazardously say almost every niadek or deck that has, there's probably some five colors, like Kenrith. It's probably.

Josh Lee Kwai

I guess not. Yeah. Those are all activities. Those are activated abilities. But most things nowadays are triggered abilities like enter the battlefields or when this happens.

I mean, I'd say that's probably 80% of stuff. So you've got, like, jodah, the unifier. Yeah, it's gross with Jota. Yeah. It doesn't double that one plus one boat.

Rachel Weeks

It's when you cast the legendary, which. It's a legendary spell. Yep. Also that decks full of legendaries, which will also trigger off of Annie joins up. So seems good.

Josh Lee Kwai

If you can play it, it's almost certainly going to be very good in the deck. There will be a few exceptions, but I think this card's very powerful. Yeah. There's not a whole lot to say about this card. It's very, very good if you can play it, look at it if you can't.

Rachel Weeks

Sorry. Next time, there's gonna be a lot of. There's gonna be a lot of. Why isn't this. Why isn't an esper?

That's good, though. I prefer things that make it harder for you to play, like powerful effects that reward you for being in a specific color pairing. Yeah. Like smothering tide. What if it was like, Boros, only?

I think that rules. Yeah, I think it's a totally different card. Exactly. All right, next one. Next one is a little bird.

It's Avon interrupter one white. White for a two. Two bird. Rogue with flash and flying. When even interrupter enters the battlefield, exile target spell, it becomes plotted, then spells your opponent's cast from graveyards or from exile cost.

Two more to cast. Okay, this is our first instance of plot on this episode. Yeah, let's talk about it. So plot is if you cast a spell for its plot cost, or if it becomes plotted in another way, it means that the owner of the spell may cast it on a later turn. So whatever turn it was plotted on, they can't cast it that turn.

Josh Lee Kwai

They have to cast it on a later turn at sorcery speed only without paying its mana cost though. Yes. Now in this case, the aven interrupter has a clever little text which says, oh, it'll actually cost two, but if you do this to an eight CMC, eight mana value spell, they'll still only have to pay two for it. With the aven interrupter out. It's interesting because I think you look at this and you're like, oh, it's kind of like a reprieve.

Rachel Weeks

Like it bounces the spell back to your hand. But honestly, even interrupter is better than that because it basically blanks counter spells entirely. Cause they don't do anything. If they're plotted, then their sorcery speed only it blanks x spells. Because if you're casting a spell for plot, x is automatically zero.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, you cast it without paying its mana cost, you can't make x equal to anything. You can't add mana to that part of it. So there are situations where even interrupter is a hard counter spell, and in white we don't have a ton of those. Yeah, I think the two comparables that I immediately think of are reprieve and lapse of certainty. So yeah, reprieve returns it to hand and lapse of certainty puts it on top.

Lapse of certainty is very close because I would say putting it on top is close to saying, hey, you can't cast until next turn. But a lapse of certainty, they do have to pay the mana cost all the way over again. Reprieve is interesting because you draw a card to replace the card, the reprieve itself. But if they had the mana, they could cast it again right now because you just returned it to hands. There's another interesting thing, because aven interrupter does not say it counters the spell, it says exile the spell.

Reprieve is sort of like this, but lapse of certainty says counter that spell. And that matters because if a spell says can't be countered or you use an effect that's makes your spells uncountable, reprieve and avian interrupter will still work on that stuff cause they're not technically countering it. So those are just nice little things to have. Somebody goes supreme verdict and you have a big board. Avian interrupter will solve that problem, and probably a good solve in that instance, because usually they're trying to wipe your board when your board's very scary and you only probably need one more turn with that board.

Because now you get to pump it and win or whatever. Yeah. I think this is a very good defensive counter spell. Like, you're stopping a board wipe, you're stopping an opponent's win con. You're trying to delay it for a turn.

Rachel Weeks

You could do this for ramp and stuff, but it doesn't feel as good when it's a setup thing because win cons and board wipes are so timing focused. So if you can interrupt a counter spell or something that really matters when it was cast, this becomes even more powerful. Yeah. It's not good against, speaking of panharmonicons and stuff like that. Right.

Josh Lee Kwai

Like, to stop their setup plays because they just cast it on their next turn before they would cast their next thing anyway. It's not that different than probably what they were going to do, but, yeah, I like what you said there, which is to protect your board or stop something that's impactful to you right now. This will do that. And then say, you know, now I've also got this tutu flyer that's not totally irrelevant. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

It really matters that this is on a body because it can wear swords. It can be blinked. You can do this more times. Like, if somebody gets you with an ephemerate in this thing that is back breaking. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

If they just have, like, an eldrazi displacer out or something, what can you cast? You're staring at it being like, crap. Anything really scary, they're gonna do that to it for basically free. Yeah. And then in the meantime, it's got this little static ability that says spells your opponent's cast from graveyards or from exile.

Rachel Weeks

Costs two more to cast, and that's not crazy relevant, but it is. It hurts impulse draw a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's gonna, incidentally just hurt stuff other people are doing, and that's not the main reason you're playing it, but that is definitely. You like, what's the blue card that says when people cast things from other places that you get to draw?

Yes. Ghostly pilfer. Yeah. So that's a similar card that's sort of just incidentally dealing in a similar space. And you like it because you draw a lot of cards off of it, which tells you people are casting things from other places.

Josh Lee Kwai

Other places. Often enough that it matters. This card will say, you probably can't do that as much. Or maybe you can't do it at all all of a sudden. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

I think even interrupter is going to be a very, very powerful magic card. It can be extremely oppressive if used in these high synergy situations that we talked about, like the blinking it repeatedly and all of that. And it does have, you know, it's a hate piece. It does say that on it. So there are.

There are definitely playgroups that are like, we're not into that kind of play. To me, though, it's still. It's so sick. Yeah. To me, though, it's still nicer than a regular counter spot.

I agree. Cause it doesn't actually stop. It doesn't stop it forever at its base use. Obviously, with synergies, you can be a little more oppressive. But I think in your average playgroup, it would be hard to complain about this.

Josh Lee Kwai

Too bad. Cause it's like, just not right now. Yeah, you get to do that next turn. It reminds me of delay. Yeah.

I love reprieve and I love lapse of certainty. I think almost. It's bad, though, as we continue to make these, because one of the reasons reprieve and lapse of certainty are so good are people don't calculate it into their sequencing. They just kind of assume certain things. Says you're in white.

And the more that there is, the more they start to think of it like blue. And the more they start to go, well, how many man, you got open? Okay. It could be these cards. All right, so I'm just gonna calculate in what if they did that to me?

And now I'm gonna play slightly differently and maybe not make it as devastating to me. So it's almost worse when there's more of them. That's true. Yeah. It's like you look at three mana open and, well, one, or in this case, two of them are white, and you're like, could be Teferi's protection.

Yeah. Six years ago, you're like, you can't do anything. Yeah, yeah. But now it's lacks of certainty. It's aven interrupter, it's reprieve.

Rachel Weeks

It's Teferi's protection. It's any number of board protection. White is tricksier than it ever has been. And I really. I do like this card.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely gonna play it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the coolest thing about white is white is so pesky, like this.

Rachel Weeks

It is so resilient. It is so interactive. And that's exactly what this bird does. I think the word you're looking for is annoying. Annoying.

Yeah. It will not die. All right, so the next card is an interesting one. It's called crackling spellslinger. It's three red.

Josh Lee Kwai

Red for a two. Two human wizard. So a five man. A two. Two.

It has flash. Okay. When crackling spellslinger enters the battlefield, if you cast it the next instant or sorcery spell you cast this turn has storm. Storm means when you cast that spell, copy it. For each spell cast before this turn, you may choose new targets for the copy.

So you will definitely at least the next instrument or sorcery spell you cast this turn, you'll get two copies of it because you've cast a crackling spell slinger. Yeah. So at the very base level, it is for each spell cast before this turn, it doesn't care which player cast those spells. So if somehow we set up a scenario where Rachel casts two spells, I flash this thing in and then cast an instrument of sorcery, it'll get, I'll get four of it. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

Which is like we should say, this is in the Quickdraw commander deck, the spellslinger one fitting, I do think that that is where this card is so efficient and looks the most powerful to me is you flashing it in on somebody's endstep after they've cast a reserved two cards. Right. Cause then you can take your swords to plowshares, you can take your bounce belt, you can take your lightning bowl or braid and have four targets for it. Pretty good. It's a lot of mana to hold up in red seven mana.

If you cast this and then braid, but. Right. With swords or something, it would be six, which is a lot. You'd have to have other options in your hand if somebody didn't cast two or three spells. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. To me, that's the sort of opportunity, but also almost like begrudgingly, I would do that scenario. Right. Because I'd rather use it offensively. Right.

Rachel Weeks

As a win con. Yeah. Is that the other side of this cart, right. Is that. It's in red.

So you're in these giant red mana maker colors with your mana geysers and your Jesca's wells. So you can have a huge turn and basically turn whatever toothpick you find into a wincon as long as you can storm hard enough, of course. Yeah. I think red is just so good now. Like you said, jessica's will mana Geyser.

Josh Lee Kwai

There's also dockside Stormkill artist Bergy, even like seething song. And there's a whole bunch of little pieces in there where if you're a spell swinger deck, I don't think it's super hard to imagine scenarios where you're using this. Either you use this into mana Geyser to just get twice as much mana, or you mana geyser into this to then cast three or four more other things. Before you say, okay, you know, I've cast seven, eight things, you know, and now I'm gonna. I guess you would have, you have to sequence this, obviously, where you cast the other things and then crackling spellslinger and then whatever, you know, you might be able to just do a lightning bolt in there at the end and be like, yeah, I have 22 lightning bolts, though.

Yeah, that'll do it. That'll take out at least two players. Yeah. And that's lightning bolt like. That's probably not what the ending thing is.

You know, it's tormented hailfire, maybe, or it's, you know, worse things, is all the thing. Yeah, it's an interesting card. Wizards really loves to print these, like, five mana creatures with spell slinging abilities, usually with Flash. There's even, this isn't even the only one in this set of commander precons they did. It also sounds the same.

Rachel Weeks

It's smirking. Spelljacker. It's also a five mana flash creature that has spelly abilities. Right. So it's not easy to find spots in your spellslinger deck for a five mana creature, especially a five mana creature that isn't good until you have your big turn.

But it does play into that pattern of, we make a ton of red Mana. We have the big turn. We cast this and we've done it. Yeah. If you're paired with blue, too, there might be ways to pair it with some bounce to reuse it.

Josh Lee Kwai

So using your scenario, like you said, but still have it available to me to use in the sort of big game ending scenario also. Oh, you can use it with the land that bounces. Wizards. There you go. The Telarian.

Rachel Weeks

Nope. Is it tellurian academy?

Josh Lee Kwai

I can picture the land, but I forget the name of it. Riptide laboratory. There you go. Yeah, you can bounce it with the land. That's pretty sweet.

Yeah. I think you're likely to be in blue with this. Right. Because that's the spell slinger Dex. And another thing I would say is red and blue, but more red these days is often making a lot of treasure as the component of what it's doing.

And so you might have the mana to do this in a pinch when you just notice, like, oh, Jimmy, cast four spells. This turn, I am going to do the cast this endswords type of deal, and maybe it's unsummoned. Right? Yeah, that's actually not bad because you go, cool. Huge tempo play.

Rachel Weeks

I mean, it's a build your own cyclonic rift, I guess, right? Jimmy cast four spells, you crackling spellslinger and some sort of unsummoned variant. And one of the storm copies targets, the crackling spell slinger. That's pretty neat, being able to hold that back and make sure that you always have that kind of interaction up or you still have that Wincon for the later turn. Yeah, there's definitely some neat tricks here.

We've seen a lot of this kind of card, and I think this one is the most playable version and the one that I am most curious to see what it does in games. I agree with you, though. There's a limited amount of spots in a deck for this. And is it enough to push out the dual caster mage fury storm stuff that sits there? Cause you can't have very many of those cards in your deck.

Josh Lee Kwai

Cause they don't do anything on their own. So you don't wanna find yourself with a hand with three of those in it. So you really can only have a couple of them in your deck. And does this push one of those other ones out? I don't know.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. Curious to see. Especially if you're in a mono red storm deck. I think you could do some cool stuff with it. But the blue really does help with all the un summons.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. Okay. Up next, we have duelist of the mind. Oh, this is the Nathan story of the world championship card. Yep.

Rachel Weeks

It's pretty sweet. Looks just like him. Yeah, except for with wings. Or does he have wings? I don't know if I've ever seen.

Nathan does have wings, actually. He's got some special powers. One in blue for a star, three, human advisor with flying and vigilance. Duelist of the mind's power is equal to the number of cards you've drawn. This turn.

Okay. Whenever you commit a crime, you may draw a card. If you do discard a card, this ability triggers only once each turn, so. It'Ll make itself a two three if you do that. A two three on your turn.

Yes. And then a one turn on everybody else's turn. If you do that. If you do that. Yeah, it's a zero three most of the time.

The first thing we need to talk about is crimes. Right? How do you commit crimes? Well, by targeting. It's whenever you cast a spell or activate an ability that targets an opponent or their things.

That includes spells on the stack, permanents on the battlefield, their hand, their library, or even cards in their graveyard. Basically, any time you actually activate or cast something that it doesn't affect your stuff, it's probably a crime. Yep. So counterspelling stuff, even crime, and add looting to it on top of it with this card, which is pretty strong. This is an interesting mechanic in commander because control and going one for one targeting stuff isn't a great strategy, just overall.

So I would say if you're targeting stuff and that often your deck is like a heavy control deck or you have a commander that has some kind of ability that targets stuff. Yeah. Because if your commander can target stuff repeatedly, then all of a sudden you're adding loot to whatever that is. And that's pretty good. I don't think the power increase is worth a lot, although you're in blue, so you may have a turn where you draw 20 cards somehow, in which case this does become relevant as a 20 power flyer that can smack somebody and kill them, which I guess is a possibility I hadn't really thought about until just now.

Josh Lee Kwai

That's really cool. That's an upside. I was, you know, you know me, I love a combat trick. I love the idea of casting like a mystic confluence and drawing three cards and eating somebody's attacker with it, or. They don't block and you maybe got ley line out or something and you're like, fork a windfall and just kill you.

Something like that. That's cool. Or like the game nights live where. What was the card? The psychic possession or whatever.

Yes, professor, on me. And he drew like 28 like this, just incidentally has 29 power probably now. On a two mana creature. Yeah. If you're drawing a ton of cards, this can definitely be a little engine piece early.

Rachel Weeks

That can surprise take somebody out of nowhere. Yeah. To me, the biggest comparable is Ledger shredder. Yeah. Which is an amazing card that we see a ton of.

Josh Lee Kwai

Cause it's so good and so efficient. And this is a two mana flyer with similar abilities. How do you feel about that comparison legislator? You don't have to do anything. Yeah, it's true.

Rachel Weeks

It's hard to beat. Don't you get to loot for free? As it gets bigger, it just stays bigger. It stays bigger. Yeah.

I don't think this is better than ledger Shredder in the average deck. I think if you're in a wheels deck or if you're in, my guess. Is Ledger Shredder's still probably better even in a wheels deck. Yeah. I mean, I'm still thinking about it being 20 power, but I think generally you're going to see more cards with Ledger Shredder.

And you're going to be happier with Ledger Shredder on more turns. Yeah. But it is neat that it's a different win con for drawing cards that isn't just like the five mana artifact that pings when you draw cards. That I can never think of the. Name the five man artifact that pings whenever you draw a card.

Josh Lee Kwai

Psychosis crawler. Yeah, that one. Okay. Well done. This has been a pop quiz.

I passed. This is. This is how I think about cards is in Skyfall searches. I don't know the name of any of them, but I could be CMC five color. I feel like I used to know the name of all cards, but there's, there's so many release now, it's really hard to sort of keep up.

My brain's full. Yeah. So this is interesting card. I think it's definitely playable. I think it's a little bit niche.

I think you really want to be committing a lot of crimes. Like you said, your commander's doing it. Or maybe something like 20 cards in your deck, maybe even a little more target your opponent or something of theirs. Yeah, maybe if you have a burn deck or something like that. Or maybe you have, you know, something more closer to like twelve to 15, but three or four of those are repeatable.

Yeah, you know, Tim or something like that. You know, obviously people don't just play Tim's. You either play a ton of timbs or none. I love this in a Tim's deck, though. That's fun.

Yeah. So maybe you've got a couple of different things that could target your opponent's stuff repeatedly at low cost or, you know, no card cost. And then this gets a little bit better. This, because looting is super powerful. I think people underrate just how powerful that card selection is.

Rachel Weeks

Oh, yeah. Plus you're in blue often. Putting things in the graveyard is not. They're not lost to you. Right.

Josh Lee Kwai

You still have access to it. So, yeah, this is a playable card and a good card. I think it's easy to look at legislator and be like, legislature is better. And think, then I don't play this. And it's like, it's different.

Rachel Weeks

It's a little different. Yeah. But I think you can, a lot of decks could. Or you play both, play both and be just fine. Yeah, yeah.

I was looking at, I had a tough time picking cards with crime on them for commander because you just really, really need that repeatable ability. So I was like, looking for commanders that fit the crime profile. Yeah, you need to go work for the FBI for this? Yeah. And first of all, Feldergrif is full of crime, my girl.

Every ability that Feldergriff has is a crime. So that's the kind of deck that I would look at and just run through all of the crime cards and see if them match any of your specific deck restrictions. I play with Karuga, so I can't play duelist of the mind, but I do really like the free strider lookout. Oh, yeah. So this is another card from this set that we wanted to bring up here, because I think it fits a similar pattern of what's your deck doing?

Josh Lee Kwai

Can it commit crimes repeatedly? And that would be like, do you play this card? So freestyle lookout is whenever you commit a crime, look at the top five cards in the library, and you can put a land card from among them onto the battlefield. Tapped. And it's a three three creature for three with reach.

And I think that's a very powerful ability. If I just incidentally get to just ramp every time that I commit a crime. And again, if you're playing even I was thinking that one, it's like Kenrith becomes kind of good. Like, I'll give. You can have a counter.

Yeah, I'll give five life, or I'll put a counter on your thing so that I can ramp out a land and maybe do that, like, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put a counter on your thing. Ramp out on land. Put a counter on your thing. Ramp out of land.

Put a counter on your thing. Ramp out of land. Okay, I kill the thing. Yeah. Ramp out of land.

Rachel Weeks

Crime. Yeah. I mean, with Feldergraff, I was like, okay, I want to be giving hippos anyway. If I have this on board, I'm gonna run Feldergraff out earlier. I'm gonna be handing it out to.

You can still hand it to the same person. You just only do it once per turn. The once per turn limitation isn't so bad in commander if you could do it at instant speed. The other cool crime enabler that I found was scarab God, which is really good with duelists of the mind. Cause the looter's really good with scarab God.

And if you pick off stuff in their graveyard, that counts as a crime. So there's definitely some cool things you can do. Check your commanders, see if any of them can repeatably do crimes. And then you can look at the crime cards a little bit closer. All right.

Josh Lee Kwai

Oh, boy. Wow. I did that thing where I threw it almost yeah. Oh, he's back. Okay.

The next one is everybody's favorite, and very cute in his cowboy hat. It's fibblefip. Lost on the range. One blue. Blue for a one.

One legendary homunculus has ward two, as everything does these days. You may look at the top card of your library at any time. The top card of your library has plot. The plot cost is equal to its mana cost. You may plot non land cards from the top of your library.

Rachel Weeks

This is a very interesting card, and it's sort of like the Aven interrupter, where it plots something that doesn't have plot, where it lets you just put a ton of stuff into exile if you keep hitting spells. That is right. It can't plot land. So it works like future sight in all of the variants where sort of once you hit those, you know, future site, I guess you can sort of get through the first one and you can play it right. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

But, like, once you get to a land with fibbletip, you're done. Unless you can sensei's top or something shuffle in some way. Plot itself is really hard to evaluate. For me, I agree. How likely is it that I'm able to pay any amount of mana for something that doesn't do anything right now?

Rachel Weeks

It's really interesting. Proactive spells that you want to further your board, but you also, it gives you this strange thing where you can commit mana for a big turn later. So that's certainly one play pattern in commander. But then committing Mana and not having any defenses, not having anything, not having any creatures, sort of leaves you a step behind. So fibbletiff is one of those things where it's like, I wonder if you look a step behind and you're actually a step ahead, like, kind of like a vidalcanori thing, or if you look a step behind and you're a step behind.

Josh Lee Kwai

Well, and also they see what you plotted. Yeah. The face up thing. Kill is so tricky. Yeah.

So if it's something awesome, they know that's coming, there's no obfuscating it. Now, you can cast it off of plot at any turn. After the turn, it was plotted, so you don't have to do it. The next turn. It's your turn.

Yeah. At sorcery speed. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be the very next turn, and I think that can work in the favor of certain effects where it's like, I'll just let it sit there and, like, you know, if it's a boardwalk or something, it's like, people know you got it. They have to play weird.

But you can just be like, oh, you didn't want to stick your neck out and put any creatures out. I just won't cast it. And then it becomes like Navinural's disc or something. So that in that case, you could use it to your advantage. But it's definitely to your disadvantage if you go plot, expropriate, go.

Well, they're going to try and kill you. They're going to kill you now and. Definitely going to hold up their counter spells if it's some awesome creature. Nyx, blue mansion, go. They're going to play around it.

Yeah. They'll be like, well, I'm definitely not tapping out. I'm just going to hold up this swords of plowshares or whatever. And so that give and take is just hard to evaluate. It's hard for me to tell how good or bad that will be.

Rachel Weeks

So the best place that I can think about it is if you have a commander that you generally want out early or you want to wait to cast spells until your commander's on the board is a big thing. Jodah, the unifier is something that we mentioned already. So if you can plot a couple of creatures, slam Jodah, and then cast this from exile. Cast this from exile. Cast this from exile, and have a huge turn.

That's very powerful. Yeah, yeah. That play pattern of my commander is a setup card. And what I generally have to do without the plot is play it, cross my fingers, hope to untap, then do stuff that gets me the value or the synergy from the commander, or wait. Until you have the mana to do both on the same turn.

Josh Lee Kwai

Right. Or, you know, and you may still have to do this. Wait until I can at least hold up some counter magic or some protection so I have a better chance of untapping with it or waiting to have swift boots or greaves or something out and then do it. So this is another way to kind of tweak that play pattern of make sure I get value out of my commander. That's interesting.

I think if that's a really important part of your deck, then maybe fivil fit belongs. Speaking of greaves and swiff up boots, I think plot gets a lot better if you have a bunch of haste enablers in your deck. Yes. Because then you plot a creature, and normally it's like, man, I'm not going to attack for that creature with that creature next turn, either. It'll be the turn after that when it comes off a plot.

That's a long time. But, oh, I've got greaves or swift boots. I got an anger, I got rhythm of war or whatever. Rhythm of the wild in my deck. Then that's enough to make plot probably a little bit better in my deck than the average deck.

Makes it a little more suspend. And I think all those things, you just have to factor them in. But it's really hard for me in my mind right now without sort of seeing it all in action. And it's going to be very situational, too. There'll be certain games where, like, I can't afford.

There's a cool card on top of my deck, but I can't afford in this game against Rachel because she likes to fill the board up really early to just, you know, pay five mana, put that on plot and do nothing this time. Yeah. Like to. If you ramp on two, cast, fibblethip on three, and then hit a land on top, you're like, yeah. Cause you played a three man and one one.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. And this is terrible. And then the next turn, you plot, like, two things, and you still only have a three man, a one one, and a rock. And then you cast Jotah and cast those things. That's a big turn.

But everybody can see that coming. Yeah. If they just counter Jodah or kill it immediately, you're in pretty big trouble there. And they saw it coming. Yeah.

I mean, if you're playing against Jotah, they know they have to counter it. Anyway, but, well, they don't have to counter it always. Sometimes you can kill it. You can kill it later if they. Cast it early and do the cross your fingers thing.

Yeah, it's interesting. And fibbletip is so different. I think the natural thing that you compare it to is reality chip. Right. Yeah.

It's a cheap effect that lets you cast stuff off your lightbox. Gives you some card advantage. Yeah. And it's like reality chip is two to cast, three to equip. You can't cast until you equip, but you know when you need to equip, basically.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. And I still think reality chip is so, so much better, even with that mana value. Way better. Cause you get this stuff now. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

But there are definitely decks where I could see fibbletip being really, really powerful, where you can just bank a bunch of mana for that one turn. Like in a storm deck where you're like, all right, I know I'm gonna get hit for a little bit, but I'm gonna bank some spells. I'm gonna pre cast a bunch of things. So I can get my storm really high on my next turn. I have three free spells and I'll take the damage in the meantime.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. So maybe it is really good if you just have a bunch of one mana cantropy type things. Yeah. Cause you just plot away three cantrips that are just adding to your spell count, giving you some minor little metamorphose style something and draw a card and you're just setting up for like, okay, that's gonna be the turn. And that turn isn't next turn probably either.

Rachel Weeks

Probably not. It's probably like three or four turns down the road when I draw the other pieces. But it's kind of cute in wheel decks. Cause you can save, be like, all right, I'll plot that one. And you're just trying to get spells in weird places where you can store them before you wheel.

But there are some use cases where plot is really interesting. The more we talk about it, the more I think it's probably better with incident sorcery based stuff than it is with creatures. But yeah, just because of the summoning sickness aspect of it. So maybe it works that way with artifacts and enchantments as well. But yeah, I didn't really thought about that way before.

But there's like a guardian project with plot then that's way that's better than Guardian project in my mind. Yeah. Cause you almost never just cast Guardian. Project and then cast a creature. Yeah.

And there are in the set there's like that kind of effect that has plot. Beast whisperer then falls under that same category. Absolutely. Where. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Just don't make it vulnerable. Yeah. Yeah. It makes it way more likely you're gonna at least get a card off of it if you can. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

Cast it on. If you can plot it on four and save it. So, like, there definitely is situations where plot does feel really good because you're keeping stuff safe until you can definitely use it. But that's an area you talked about, which is going to be like 40% of the time where you play this and your next turn. It's a land on top.

Josh Lee Kwai

You played a three man and won one. Yeah. It feels rough. It feels rough. It feels pretty bad.

I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to have to see this one. I want reports back from people out there. If you play fibble thips.

Was it good? I do want to do a little bit of a notice to those. There's a lot of people building around fibblethip. The EDH rec page right. Now for fibblethip has ancestral visions on it.

Rachel Weeks

And the suspend cards that don't have mana costs because they were like, oh, you could plot it for zero and then you have an ancestral recall. It doesn't have a mana cost. And fibbletip specifies its plot cost is equal to its mana cost. So if it doesn't have a mana cost, like lands, like ancestral visions, you cannot plot it from the top of your library. So it is a non bow.

Josh Lee Kwai

Okay, what about like split cards? Split cards. Because I believe their mana cost is the whole thing. It's both sides together. It's extra bad cause you have to combines them, right.

Rachel Weeks

Both sides to plot it. So it's basically equal to their man of value. In that case, if it's a two cost thing and a six cost thing, you have to pay eight. And then you would only get to cast one of those when you cast it right. And it sees colors too.

So, like, mana cost is if you plot it, if it's one blue blue, you have to pay one blue blue. It's not three colorless. So if it's a split card and it's like one in a blue and. Two black black, you'd have to plot it with. You have to plot it with the three blue, black black.

Josh Lee Kwai

Okay, what about mdfcs? So this is where things get interesting. Where you might be able to break it a little. Yes. So with like the Valky Tybalt.

Yeah. You can plot it for its Valkyrie cost for one and a black, but when you go to cast it, the card gives you an option to cast either side. So you can plot for Valkyrie for one and a black, but you cast the seven Mana planeswalker side. So when you go to cast it, you can cast either side, but when you plot it, you're only plotting off the front side. So that would be abusable only in the case where the MDFC has a cheaper CMC on the front than it does the back.

Rachel Weeks

Right? Yeah. Then you can cheat to mana cost. Right. Doesn't work with the lance, like with the ones that have lance on the back.

Josh Lee Kwai

Okay, what about adventures? Oh, God. So the mana cost of adventure spells is equal to the permanent side, the top right corner. The top right corner, right? Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

So if you were plotting a brazen borrower, you would pay one blue blue to plot it, but you could cast either side of it when you go to actually cast it. So you could cast it for petty theft, or you could. And then would you go into exile, and then you still cast it out of exile. But you would basically be paying three for that adventure cost. Or you just straight go to the creature if you wanted to.

You could flip that, though, and do a cheap creature with an expensive. Yeah. So you're looking for. I'm trying to think of adventure cards that are cheap creatures, but expensive. The only one I'm sorcery.

Josh Lee Kwai

There's not many. They're usually the other way around. Yeah. There's the mana dork from Wilds of Eldraine. The one in a green.

That bramble. Yeah. It's a seven mana like Milsom, and. She'S a creature into play, I think is what it does. Yeah.

And it bounces back to your hand. So you can do that later in the game. Yeah. Oh, so you could do that for two off of plot. Just go straight to the seven mana thing.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. Cast the seven mana thing and then cast the creature. And you're getting Marnard orc. Okay. Pretty good.

Josh Lee Kwai

That's legal and standard, right? I believe so. So there's. I don't know if you are gonna play Fitwolf if it's standard, but I don't know. Go nuts.

That one's free. Nathan Steuer. Yes.

Rachel Weeks

Shut up, Josh. Dang it. You just ruined my next world. Gave it to everybody for free. So there are like, fibbledup does offer so many weird corner cases that you do sort of have to keep an eye on.

It's also terrible with expels and with counter spells, so be careful if you're putting fibbletip in your deck. But he might be sweet. We have no idea. We're not sure. That one's fine.

Josh Lee Kwai

Cool to talk about that. All right. This next one is awesome. It is our very first spree card. It's final showdown.

Oh, this card is the real deal. Okay, so the way that spree works is when you cast a spell, you can choose one or more additional costs, but they have a default mana cost in the top right corner. So this one is white plus any number of the below. So it's white plus one. All creatures lose all abilities until end of turn.

Rachel Weeks

Next one is plus one. Choose a creature you control. It gains indestructible until end of turn. And the third ability is plus three. White.

White. Destroy all creatures. So you could pay one and a wight to have creatures lose all abilities. You can pay one in a wight to have a creature you control gain indestructible until end of turn. You could pay three.

White white and destroy all creatures. Or you could do any combination of any of those things. Yeah. The original white. You don't have to pay twice.

Josh Lee Kwai

But if you wanted to say immediately when I look at this, I say, oh, I want to give one of my things indestructible and then kill everything else, that would cost one white white plus three. So seven altogether. Yeah. Just to do that. Just to do those two things.

And you wouldn't have everything else. Lose all abilities. If you want to do that, you got to add one more mana to what I just said. Yeah, but the kicker here is, so it doesn't get lost in all of the spree explanations, is this isn't constant. Yeah, I mean, this card, I mean.

Rachel Weeks

The kicker here is spree. The kicker here is that spree is kicker. That's exactly what I thought when you said it. Yeah. So let's talk about these abilities sort of individually.

Josh Lee Kwai

The first one, I think, is kind of underratedly powerful. People do play sudden spoiling, which is obviously better because of the split second, but this thing where you turn all creatures sort of off, where they just lose abilities. This turn. So it's like you go to combat and I'm gonna stop all your attack triggers or something like that. Yeah, they had an atali that was about to swing, and you're like, we can't have that.

I can't kill it or anything, but what I can do is give us an extra turn here to deal with it. I'm just going to make it have no ability. So have fun with your six six that's swinging in and doing nothing else. Yeah. Your opponent has a chulainn deck.

Rachel Weeks

You're like, all right, before any of this begins in your upkeep, I'll pay one and a white, and I'll have all your creatures on board lose all abilities. Especially Chulain. Yeah, especially. Cause they have all those mana dorks. Yep.

You can turn off all those mana abilities in their upkeep. It does end up being very powerful and to many decks will feel like you time walked them where that turn is just kind of like they can't do much with it, which is powerful and powerful on its own. I think rarely. It'll be the most rarely used one of the three, though, probably. I do want to mention with this, it doesn't stop enters the battlefield abilities, and it won't affect any creatures that enter the battlefield after this ability.

This ability resolves. Yeah, it's not all creatures, but it's only the ones that sees when it resolves. Right? Yeah. Okay.

Josh Lee Kwai

Then the next ability is this one where you can give one of your creatures indestructible. So my brain wants to think of it like Borough's charm or something, but that is like, give all my stuff or heroic revenge. Give all your permanence. Yeah. This is one thing.

Rachel Weeks

So if you're casting this alone, it's to blank a removal spell, but specifically like a red or a blue or even a black removal spell. So it's okay, but in a pinch, it's a protection spell that you can hold up that'll save an important piece. Yeah, it could be also a boardwalk comes along and you're like, no, I don't want my commander to die. Yeah. So that is a scenario that comes up.

Yeah. And then the third mode is an instant speed wrath, which is route. Right. That's destroy all abilities at instant speed. It is important to note that these resolve in the order of the card is how these work.

So the first ability is all creatures lose all ability. Everybody loses all abilities. Then you give a creature indestructible, then the board wipe happens. It wouldn't make sense if it didn't work that way. Exactly.

That's why it's written that way. That's how all of these spree cards will work. They'll resolve in the order written. Yeah, so, I mean, that synergy is obvious. You turn off all abilities so that even if a thing says, oh, when it dies, I'll get this, or it has indestructible other things, stuff like that.

Josh Lee Kwai

But they lose all those abilities. And then you protect your one thing, and then you blow everything up. It also helps you play around if, you know, an opponent has a heroic intervention. Yeah, you can be like, even if you cast heroic intervention in response to this, your creatures are going to lose indestructible. Yeah.

Cause the way that would work is heroic intervention would have to resolve before final showdown resolves. In which case, cool, you got hexproof and indestructible, then it's gone now. Thought you were cute. Thought you were cute. There's another thing you wrote down here, which I didn't really think about.

Rachel Weeks

This is incredible. And this is where my brain kind of goes wild with these spree cards, is. Because the mana value of final showdown is one, you can find it with things like spell seeker, which looks for cheap spells under two. You can find it with sun forger. It's pretty crazy because it is an instant with mana cost four or less, and Sunforger will cast it for free.

But because spree is an additional cost, it will give you the opportunity to cast additional costs. You can pay the additional cost, so you can't. Yeah. You can do the board wipe part for free, right? Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

So if you want to board wipe, finding it with sun forger, you will pay that white and red to unattach it. Go find this, cast it for free. Quote, unquote. But it only covers that one white. And then.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah, you'll pay an additional three white white to actually make that happen. Yeah, you still get the bill for the additional, but you can do it still. Seven mana instant speed board wipe you tutored for. Yeah. The other crazy thing you can do with this is put it on an isochron.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, that's kind of nuts because it. Sees it as a one mana instant. Of course, you are gonna have to pay those additional costs. So you'll pay two to cast it, and then you can pay an additional. Whatever you need.

But the utility on it's great because now you're paying. Oh, I just want to protect given destructible this time, you know, but I'll still have it for next time if I want to wipe the board or whatever. Really, really powerful stuff. I mean, this card is so, so flexible, and I really like it. As I wouldn't cut a board wipe for this, I would cut a protection spell for this, I think, because it's a board wipe, which adds to your numbers.

Rachel Weeks

I think board wipes are very powerful right now, and it has all this flexibility that if it gets stuck in your hand when you're ahead or early game, it still does stuff. Yeah. I think we're in an era now, too, where the pendulum is swinging back towards. I know people are not gonna like me saying this, but we need more board wipes in our decks than we have for the last couple of years. We used to say, oh, you want about five board wipes in your deck?

Josh Lee Kwai

And then for the last few years, we've kind of lowered that number to two to three. You don't need as many board wipes. Be proactive, do stuff, don't blow it up. It makes the game longer. Blah, blah, blah.

But they make every legendary creature with Ward now. And so many things just have ward that it's become inefficient to use single target removal on a lot of stuff. In many cases, like roaming throne plus Voya or whatever, are out, and you're just. It's basically hex proof. That's it.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. Yeah. I need to get rid of both those things. There's a mirror over there. Like, this whole thing is just going badly.

Josh Lee Kwai

You just need board wipes more than you used to. So the fact that this can, you know, we need more, and this can fill a slot that could also be another thing. Has flexibility, I think. Yeah, this card's pretty incredible. I really am high on final showdown.

Rachel Weeks

I like any card that makes me feel smart. And the fact that I can use this in so many situations as to great effect makes me really excited, especially for white. They don't love to give white a ton of modality. It gets very powerful, like a vision things. But there's not a lot of modal white spells outside of austere command, I guess, is the one I can think of or fail well.

But this is good in different places, depending on if you're ahead or behind. You'Ll find a way to get value out of it, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I just can't envision very many games where you're like, oh, I never found a spot to use my final showdown.

Josh Lee Kwai

This will be like, cool. I saved my commander, and then I was able to continue my game plan, or they were gonna do a crazy thing, and I stopped it with the sudden spoiling thing, or the only chance I had in this game was to wipe the board and sort of reset it. And so that allowed me to do that. And the instant speed is huge on a board wipe. We didn't really go into that.

But one of the biggest downsides of board wipes, especially nowadays, because there's so much just efficient stuff, so much mana creation, that you often, if you just board wipe and then pass, Rachel builds her board, Jimmy builds his board, and Megan builds her board, and you come back to your turn, you're the one, and you're like, everyone's board is huge, and I'm the last one repopulating my board, which means even if I do what the other three players did, Rachel's using her board before I've used mine, and so she now got the initiative from me. And so instant speed board wipe allows you to go end step before my turn. Do that. Comes to my turn, I'm now in the driver's seat. I repopulate my board first, and everybody else is looking at me like, crap.

I'm going to refill my board button, but Josh gets to use his first. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

Oh, you attacked me. Board wipe. Yeah. What? It's also true, too, because you can be like, I don't need to use this board wipe unless that attack's coming at me.

And if it's not, then you know, I'll hold up protection or something like that. And the best way to find out if the attack's coming at you is to wait until it happens and be like, oh, it is. Okay, well, now, boardwipe. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, I like that card a lot.

Alrighty. Okay, this next one is interesting. It's called fleeting reflection. One in a blue for an instant. Target creature you control against hexproof until end of turn.

Josh Lee Kwai

Untap that creature until end of turn. It becomes a copy of up to one other target creature. So hexproof it, untap it, and then make it a clone of something. But all until end of turn, if you'd like. It's up to one.

It's up to. Yep. So I think this card is really interesting, and I think when you look at it, you're like, what scenario would I need hex proof and untap and a clone of something else. So I think this card makes more sense and looks better to me if you just split those into three things. If this is a spell that says Untap target creature, or target creature gains hex proof or target creature you control becomes a copy of something else.

Rachel Weeks

Because all of those, you can see the scenario where those are very powerful, like untapping a creature, untapping a powerful mana dork, untapping a big blocker, giving something hexproof, has obvious applications. And then if your opponent has an old nabone or some terrifying threat, even a deathtoucher, you can instant speed, get the thing that you want, use it. And it doesn't matter that it has x proof, it doesn't matter that it was untapped. But those are nice things. Right?

I just think there's a lot of scenarios where fleeting reflection can be a really neat tool, but obviously you need one of those things to be exactly what you're doing. And I think for me, it's the protection is going to be. It's a protection's fault. Right. That's going to be the primary usage.

Right. Like, I have a deck that's full of twiddles that untaps my creature, so it'll go into that deck because the untap is really, really strong. But I could certainly see situations where I'm like, all right, I'm going to turn my one, one spirit token into your Italy and I'll attack with it and see what happens. Right. Cause mine can attack right now, presumably.

Yeah. And you weren't ready for this weird clone that I can use here. So it's like a combat trick, and it's a clone, and it's a production spell, and all of those things are playable and really powerful in commander, especially for two mana. Yeah, I don't love it. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Because to me, you're most likely to whatever your best thing is. Yeah. They're trying to remove that, and that's why you need the hexproof. And so probably not gonna clone something else. Cause that's probably your best thing, and you want it for a certain reason.

And if you proactively use it on, like, a token to turn it into, let's just say, nick's blue manchin or something, that would be sweet. You open yourself up to, you know, they remove in a response or something like that, and you kind of get blown out in those circumstances, and you lose the protection part. Right. Like, if it's there for protection, and I think you'd go for it in an explanation scenario, you know? Okay, fine.

You know, it's worth a shot to go after it. So I think it's not like it's not usable, but I think it's just rare that you're gonna really want more than one of these modes. And the protection, one being the most important, means, like, I think most of the time I'll rather just have a counter spell because I can be so much more proactive with the counter spell. It doesn't just protect my thing, it also stops their other stuff. So if I replace a negate with this, I feel like my flexibility with negate is much greater than my flexibility with this.

Yes, negate cannot turn my spirit into an Avacyn, but most games, I don't run into a situation where I wish my negate could turn my spirit into an avison. Yeah. And that's how I sort of think about it. And the untap, I think, is sort of the weakest of all of them, because I love tapping and untapping things, don't get me wrong, but on a one use sorcery or instant is not the way I really want to do that. Oh, yeah.

Trust me. But you might come into scenarios where you do find that it is worth it to do that. I just think it's hard to predict with any given game, or even one out of ten games is gonna present you with that shot. Yeah, I think this is not a, like, I wouldn't replace a counter spell with this. In a lot of my decks, I only run a certain number of counter spells.

Rachel Weeks

So this gives me, like, a neat, defensive sort of techie piece that can use the board and do a trick that people wouldn't expect. I love the idea of turning a creature into a more powerful blocker to kill the thing. It becomes a removal spell, but you have to play it really, really, really sharp, and you need to have creatures on the board to use it. So it's not as good as a negate. But I do think that it's like.

Josh Lee Kwai

But the problem is there's so many versions of negate that you're just choosing to play, which I think is fine for, like, I want to keep my power level, my deck down, or other reasons, but, oh, man, that scares me. That scenario where I cast on my thing so I can block you, a removal spell removes their creature, and you can't really. It's hard to get blown out by that. But they go, okay, cool. You turn your thing into a thing.

I remove your thing, and it's like, ugh, I hate that scenario. I would just rather have, if I just had a swords, I'd just kill the thing attacking me. And now I didn't put myself in the situation where they kill one of my creatures, and I lost this card in my hand. It's just a more interesting card than putting another blue removal spell or another counter spell into your deck. And it presents these sort of strange situations where you're like, okay, I'll clone my archmage Emiratus, or something like that.

Rachel Weeks

And now I have two of those. And you know that you've got these tech pieces that are really valuable if you have them cloned or you know that untapping is a big part of your strategy. This is going to be a more useful tool than it looks because it looks like bulk, but I think it's neat. Yeah, it could go in a spell, Zack, because I could see, like, getting a second stormkill n artist. You can't get a second berkey, though.

Yeah, you get a second. You can't get a second. Legendary. Basically, that's the red thing, that when you sack a treasure, you get her the red back, the new one. Oh, jeez, I forgot.

Pop quiz. Oh, no, I lost this one. Proctor is a totally nother card. Okay. Goldspan Dragon is another one there.

Josh Lee Kwai

Just make your treasures tap for more. There's some things, so maybe there's situations where I want two of a thing. Yeah, I mean, wouldn't I just rather play the mirror? What's the artifact that can just turn into stuff? Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

Mirage, mirror, mirage, mirror. I win. Pop queens.

I just keep. I know this is a magical Christmas land, but I keep imagining attacking with four things and turning one of your own block creatures into an old nambone. Sure, sure. And making twelve treasures like hi yah. For all those times when people just play old Nabo to get to pass.

And you're not dead. Sweet. Turn this into your ulamog. All right, we got one more before the break here. Yeah.

Spree card. This one's the great train heist. So it's mana. Cost is red. Its first ability is two and a red.

Untap all creatures you control. If it's your combat phase, there's an additional combat phase after this phase. The second one is two colorless creatures you control. Get one plus o and gain first strike until end of turn. And the final one is a red choose target opponent, win.

A creature you control deals combat damage to that player. This turn, create a tap treasure token. So this is an extra combat spell. Yeah, that's a main component, right? Yeah, yeah.

It's sort of like the boardwalk, but it's not as flexible, I think, as final showdown where you're like, here, this part's good. And here this part's good. It's like this is an extra combat if you have additional mana. Maybe it's a little pump. Yeah, I think you could do the pump first strike.

Josh Lee Kwai

Sometimes as just like I want to get an attack and it allows me to get a big attack in that I can feel good. Like, if they block, I don't just get destroyed. Here, I have something. Yeah, yeah. But in general, you're gonna want to save this.

Set it up for like, I have a really good attack. I'm gonna do that twice. I'm gonna make treasures. I'm gonna hit them harder than they think. Right?

Yeah. I think the main thing to talk about this is it's less about spree because it's just a four mana. Instant speed extra combat is just how good? How much better is instant speed extra combats than sorcery speed extra combats? Like, what is the difference between them?

It's a decent bit better because if you have to cast a sorcerer speed one. I know, like, if I can block and kill anything, I should because it won't be swing at me a second time. Right? So that kind of matters. You can cheat some more damage in there for sure.

Rachel Weeks

Like, if you think you're only getting hit for like six, you're like, I guess I'll take six. Yeah, but that's gonna be a second one. I'll follow up one. Suddenly it's five mana. All those things are one bigger and you have a second hit, it's better.

Josh Lee Kwai

But it's not like twice as good or something. It's not like the board wipe where it's way better. It's instant speed. This is like. Yeah, it's better at instant speed, but it doesn't intrinsically change it, I don't think.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah, I think it's definitely better. Of course, anytime you can sort of get one over on your opponents and feel like you had less information when you made your blocking decisions is good. But most of the time, if you have blocks, you make the blocks, and if you don't have blocks, you don't make the blocks. Like, let's say that there was a sorcery version of that same effect. That was one less mana.

Josh Lee Kwai

You would play the sorcery version like, 100% of the time. I would think so, yeah. Whereas a board wipe, let's say wrath of God, first of five mana. There's no five mana, instant speed board wipe in white. But if there was, you'd play the instant speed one a hundred percent of the time.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah, I would think so. Yeah. So I think that shows you kind of the difference in parallel between instance and sorcery for different kinds of effects. Yeah. The treasure making is interesting, though, because if you have tapped.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. But still, if you have good attacks and you can hit with even just three creatures, make six treasures, right. Over the course of those two attacks, hit them for a decent chunk of damage, maybe kill them, maybe knock them out, maybe. That's pretty good. The six mana for your next turn means, like, you know, if I'm taking out a player, I'm probably taking out the rest of the table.

Next turn. What? Let's say you have two creatures on board. Yeah. It's turn like three.

Do you burn the Rachel game? She has two creatures on turn three. Yeah, I guess you have to Jessica's will into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, not if you don't even do the extra combat.

Rachel Weeks

Would you just burn this treasure thing? Like, if you would spend two mana at him and get two tap treasures? I don't think I would. Yeah. And then, I mean, even next turn you on tap, you have six mana.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, but it's one use mana. I think if I got three treasures, I would start to think about it. Yeah. But I don't think. Would you.

Would you pay two mana for two tap treasures? Depends on what my commander is. I guess if I could, like, slam an aurelia after that, then maybe. But old school Narset or something. Yeah, something like that.

Rachel Weeks

If it's really important that you get your commander down early, this is sort of. And your commander protects itself so that it doesn't immediately get removed. And I basically lost this cardan, the commander, right? Yeah. Yeah.

It's really tough for me to imagine spending either of the two abilities without the extra combat. So that's what I was thinking. It was like, when are the treasures most impactful that you wouldn't be using extra? If you were really wide and you had a lot of tokens, you could think about it in that maybe the first attack is. Well, if the first attack's gonna knock somebody out and there's still other players left, you might as well use the second attack on the other players.

Josh Lee Kwai

So. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's hard to imagine a lot of scenarios where you're not just holding this for the extra, extra combat. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

Yep. Cool. We still have a lot of cards to talk about. Oh, it's worth mentioning. You can find this with Sunforger also, which is really, really good.

Josh Lee Kwai

And put it on isocronceptor, too. Yeah, you can do it. Like, you can hit with the sun forger equipped and then pop the sun forger off and cast this. This gets way better with Icicron, actually, because the treasures pay for the next one. So that becomes a like, yeah, I'm getting extra combat every turn, and once I could kind of get in.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah, I would think about this as too red red for an extra combat with some upside, especially if you have some synergy like Sunforger or spell seeker. Okay, now we're actually moving on. We've got some other cards to talk about this episode. We're gonna talk about a new hate bear for tokens. It is about time.

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Josh Lee Kwai

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Two food tokens. But you can make treasure. You love treasure. Oh God, what is happening? I didn't have time to eat earlier and I have food on the brain or something.

Rachel Weeks

Didn't have time? Sounds like you need to start using factor. They deliver pre prepared meals that are ready in just two minutes. No cooking, no cleaning, just restaurant quality food you can heat up in a flat. Yeah, flash speed.

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Rachel Weeks

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Rachel Weeks

We will get to those after a few words from our sponsors. Browsing for some new tech? Yeah, I'm building T Mountain, architect. Ooh. How about Zurgo and Ojitai?

Josh Lee Kwai

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That is so cool. Ooh. Okay, check this out. I'm gonna drag and drop dragonstorm into the deck, and then boom, I'm gonna drop a bunch of dragons on the battlefield. A nine drop, huh?

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All right. We are back. Yee haw. We are talking about. I had to do something cowboy at shot.

Rachel Weeks

I know. Yeah. I didn't wear my hat for this one. I wore a hat for a couple of upgrades. I wore a baseball hat.

Josh Lee Kwai

I should have wore a cowboy hat. See, we even have them back there. I know. For game nights. Yeah, I know.

Well, it is the last Thunder Junction episode, so we're a little bit cowboyed out, maybe. Maybe. No, we're not cowboyed out. We need to cowboy up. Isn't that a thing?

I don't know. All right, we're moving on here. We're talking about the cards in the 99 from outlaws of Thunder Junction. Are you? Next card up is a mono black one.

It is a spree card. It is insatiable avarice. One black for a sorcery has spree. But only two options. Option number one, you have to you plus two.

So it would be three mana to do this. Search your library for a card, then shuffle and put that card on top. And then the second spree option is plus black black target. Player draws three cards and loses three lives. So for black black black, you can draw three, lose three.

For black black, and two you can search for. Remember, it resolves in this order. Search for a card, put it on top of your library, then draw three cards and lose three, one of which will be the card that you search for. Okay, so it's a three mana imperial seal. Lish.

Rachel Weeks

A three mana. Draw three. Five mana demonic tutor. Draw two. Sure.

Ish. Ish. You lose some life in there. And it's black, black, black. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Which is rough. Yeah. This is an interesting. I think the first mode is an incredibly over costed tutor. Yep.

Rachel Weeks

And if you don't have a way to draw it immediately, I would feel very behind just paying two in a black for a top of library tutor. Yep. But three mana. Draw three, lose three. That's a card that we would play.

Absolutely. I mean, that's like mano black, painful truths, kind of. Which is three mana. Draw three illusory. You have to be very heavy black.

Josh Lee Kwai

Because it's black, black, black. So, yeah, the casting cost is tough, but if you're mono black or maybe two color, but, like, 60% of your deck is black and you're mana leans towards black a lot more. Cause you don't need to cast this on turn three either. No, you don't need cards yet. So you're casting this a little bit later than that.

So it's not like you need to hit black, black, black in your first three lands or something like that. And you're in mono black already. You're gonna have the mono black supercharged packages like the one that doubles all your swamps. And Urborg is what I was thinking of. Yep.

Rachel Weeks

It's definitely good in like a. Like a keurig deck where you're really. Focused on really good. Now it's a free draw. Three.

Josh Lee Kwai

Well, lose a lot more than that. You have to pay black, black, black. Yeah. So. So it's six, four, six.

No, nine. Yeah, pay nine, draw three. Yeah. And I will say one of the upsides of just draw spells is the fact that they can dig you out of, like, missing land drops and things like that. So if you start out and you're in a or zalt deck and you go, so, swamp planes, this won't help you find that fourth flame drop.

It has to be black, black. So maybe I was a little bit wrong earlier when I said that it didn't matter as much. Yeah. I think this is just. Here's a question.

Diabolic tutor versus this. I would run this. It's like four mana to go get a card to hand. It's really hard to follow that. Up with an actual play, whereas, like.

Rachel Weeks

But you know, this is black, black, black. I guess you wanna draw three. I just don't like tutors. I just don't like tutors as well. They're close and they're close.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. I agree with you. I would play this over most of the time. I'd just rather die Balaktur. But I think the gap between those two are not that big.

And I don't play dialogue tutor, which is why I don't think this is generally gonna see a ton of play. It's just too inefficient and too hard to cast. And, you know, it is nice to think when you add them up, you get both things. But that's five mana. You're not casting any of the stuff you got right.

Yeah. I would think about this as a three mana draw spell with an emergency tutor option. And, like, I really need a boardwalk. The problem is I have to spend five minutes to go get that. What's the chance I can still cast it after?

Rachel Weeks

You need eight mana to follow it up with a toxic deluge and a lot more life. Yeah. Yeah. It's not my favorite. I don't think I'm gonna be putting this in any decks right away.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. The next card is Kambal profiteering mayor. One a white and a black for a two for human advisor. Whenever one or more tokens enter the battlefield under your opponent's control, for each of them, create a tapped token. That's a copy of it.

Rachel Weeks

This ability triggers only one each turn. Then whenever one or more tokens enter the battlefield under your control, each opponent loses one life and you gain one life. So this is interesting. If your opponent makes a treasure token repeatedly, like with a Stormkill nurtist or something, you get one tapped treasure token. If they play a dockside extortionist, they get four treasure tokens.

You get four tapped treasure tokens, but no matter how many tokens you make, you drain them for one. Yeah.

I think this card is very powerful. I mean, everything makes tokens now. Everything makes tokens. Everything. The commander deck I have is like a stack of tokens this high.

There's so many removal spells that make tokens. If somebody beast within their card and you get a free beast out of it, that's awesome. I mean, there's clues, there's foods, there's maps, there's treasures. Zombies, bloods. There's zombies and sapperlings and plants.

Josh Lee Kwai

It's insane. And in fact, I would say one of the hardest things we deal with with gameplay episodes for this show is not finding the cards for the decks, it's finding the tokens for the deck and enough tokens. And I would say 90% of games, we get into the middle of the game, somebody plays a card and we're like, where's the whatever token? And we look through this huge stack and we've just missed some because there's so many. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.

So yeah, just that part of it is going to. You're just incidentally, you don't even have to build your deck around it. This is the type of car like, you just play it. If you've got token synergies, it's going to be great. But even in not token synergies, you're just going to get a lot of stuff.

Rachel Weeks

I think you could just throw this in the deck. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because it's just a little hate bearer that says like, okay, if you're going to make some tokens over there, you better slow down just a little bit. Maybe don't play that anointed procession because I will be benefiting from your anointing procession. Oh, boy.

It's tough to play against if you're playing the token deck. You do have to find an answer for this. So it is a little bit of a speed bump for the kinds of decks that are really running rampant in commander. Not to mention there's just so many removal spells that just hand out free tokens all the time that you could run in your deck. You could run a generous gift.

I don't love it, but you could. Oh yeah, that's true. Because you give them a token. Yeah. So you give yourself an elephant in exchange.

Josh Lee Kwai

We're talking about in the 99. In the 99, yeah. So it's not exactly a builder. Yeah. If you build a kambal deck, then generous gift definitely goes in it for sure.

Rachel Weeks

Your whole deck is full of these. There's a brand new generous gift that I wanted to mention. We're not going to talk about it because it's like pretty good. But you know, it's bovine intervention. It's the one in a white destroy target, artifact or creature.

Its controller makes a two two ox. All right. Combo. I was thinking like rampage of the clans or something that gives a lot of tokens to everybody all at once. And I like that because it's spread out.

Josh Lee Kwai

It's like Jimmy gets three, Rachel gets four, Jake gets two, and I get all those. Cause they're all made at once, right? Yeah. I mean, if they're all enter the battlefield under your opponent's control for each of them. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

Create a tape tapped token. That's a copy of it. This ability triggers only one each turn. Yeah, I mean, I would assume if all the tokens are made at the same time, you get all of them. So that could be a cool little combo, depending on what colors you're in and what your deck's doing.

Josh Lee Kwai

If it doesn't have a lot of enchantments and artifacts, there's, like, commanders that'll. Give tokens away to your opponents. And it's obviously very powerful in those ability. In those. Those decks.

Rachel Weeks

Like a Shadrix type of thing. You give them an inkling, you get the inkling as well. But generally, I think this is just the kind of card you can throw into a white black legends deck or a white bat black token deck. And it's gonna do a lot of work for you. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Even just sort of a Kenrith y five color. Trying to cover a lot of different angles. And it's just saying, like, if I play against a token deck, this will help me keep up with that. Yeah. Oddly, I think this card would be better if it didn't have the draining effect.

Rachel Weeks

Cause the draining effect is kind of like, hey, remember. Interesting. This card's a problem. I'm doing something every time you're doing something. Yeah, it has.

It has that. I just think it's gonna be annoying because you're gonna be. Have to be like, hey, can I borrow a couple goblin tokens? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm gonna make those. Yeah. Okay. Can I go. Saplings?

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, can I borrow a couple of those boards just full of their tokens? That'll cause me to want to kill you. Yeah, you're gonna need your.

Yeah. Oh, four. Four. Be. Sorry.

I only have three beasts. Can I borrow one of your. Okay, the next one is lava spur boots. You know, it's not really a cowboy wild west type of setting unless there are some boots with the spurs. They are meant for walking.

Lava spur boots. One mana for an artifact equipment equipped. Creature gets one plus zero and has haste and ward one. All right. These are swiffa boots at home, kind of.

Yep. And equips for one. Did I already say that? I might already say that. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

One to cast, one to equip. Plus one plus o haste and ward one. So we know these abilities are powerful in commander already. So, like, we know that ward is good. We know that haste is good.

One to cast, one to equip. It's hard to ask for cheaper. The question is, does this beat out swiftfoot boots? Yeah. Cause it's one less mana to cast it.

Josh Lee Kwai

Same equip cost. And you get ward one instead of hex proof, which is a big platform. Yeah, it's tricky. I mean, I don't run a lot of swift foot boots these days. Like, if I want a pair of shoes, I run lightning greaves.

Rachel Weeks

And then if I'm, like, trying to equip it with stuff, I'll run swift foot boots. I don't tend to run both, especially if I'm trying to use swiff up boots to protect a commander that wants to attack right away. It's just expensive to cast your commander and hold up the one to attack. But this is really cheap. You can find it with.

With Urza's saga. So there's more synergies around lava spurt boots. Yeah. I'm like you. I don't play swiff of boots that much.

Josh Lee Kwai

So the question is kind of like, it's definitely not as good as Greaves. Lava spur boots is not as good as greaves. I don't think so. Yeah, it's lots of fun. The amount of mana you save between two and one, versus the equipped cost of zero and one is.

And the equipped cost is the cost you're gonna pay repeatedly. So that matters a lot more, for sure. And for that reason, I do think swift boots is probably, in my estimation, still better. Because the protection component is usually the more important component to it. And the haste is good, but I don't necessarily.

Usually you're playing swiftly boots, and usually you're playing greaves also. Mainly. Cause I don't want my commander to die. I mean, I think haste is a huge part of those, though. I attack more than you do, but.

Like, it's a very good part. But I think you want the protection and the haste is gravy. Yeah, it's rarely that I want the haste and the protection is gravy. And the ward one is a huge difference between hexproof and the two mana casting cost, versus the one mana, I think, is less of a big difference. Yeah.

To me. Cause I'm not gonna pay that over and over. So it's really just one mana total somewhere over the course of the game, which feels okay to me. If the equip cost was zero on lava spur of boots, I would have. A different then definitely.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. Or if swiff of boots was two to equip and lava spur boots was one, although swift boot boots becomes quite bad. Two to equip. I think the one colorless is actually huge. It just fits into commander curves really well.

Especially in decks that are running talismans and that kind of thing. Cause so often, cast the signet or not signet. You cast your arcane signet, you cast your mind stone. And then you can cast it right away. And it doesn't come.

It comes down the turn before that. So it just fits in the early turns better for me. Whereas swift foot boots, I would still rather ramp onto. And then I want to cast my commander, even if I don't have the swift foot boots. It feels awkward.

Josh Lee Kwai

But the problem is, in those scenarios, you often, if you're so tight, don't have the extra manual equipment anyway. Yeah. So it's. I don't know. I don't think it's gonna matter all the time that you're able to get it out there.

You also have to be able to equip it. Yeah. So, I don't know. Cause ward one. Ward one is not hexproof.

I'm annoyed by Ward and just how much they've been putting it on stuff. And it just takes away the interactivity of games. When you just aren't able to remove stuff. Or ward two and Ward three feels like whoever removes that loses the game. Because they had to pay so much to do that.

That they couldn't develop their board. And everybody else just benefited. But Ward one is the one where I think they should have just. They shouldn't have had ward in a number. I think Ward should have just only been Ward one.

And that's all you can do. Sure. Yeah. And just give it hexproof, or give it ward, but also just don't do that most of the time. So, to me, Ward one is just not very much protection.

Rachel Weeks

If it was Ward two, I think they're concretely better than swift foot boots. Yes. I will be putting this probably over swift foot boots in Lord of Tresserhorn. Because the one plus zero makes a very big difference when your commander's power is ten. But that is a pretty narrow use case.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. And I can't think of a deck that I have. Where I even care about the power of the commander.

Rachel Weeks

I can't think of one. I'm trying to, but I can't think of one. That's the difference between them. He used to have Grevin. Grevin's power matters.

Josh Lee Kwai

But I don't care about Grevin's power. No. It's how many cards you draw. It's how I can. Yeah.

I'm gonna pump it so one doesn't really matter that much to me. Yeah. All right. Speaking of equipment at home, this next one is lost G tay. It is a one mana legendary equipment.

Rachel Weeks

It says, whenever equipped creature deals combat damage, put a charge counter on lost cheetah, remove a charge counter from it, choose one untap target land. Target creature can't block this turn, or put a one one counter on equipped creature, it has equip one one to cast, one to equip three abilities. This time, you only get one charge counter. It's like they split Umizawa's jite down the middle. Now it's two.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. I mean, Umuzawajite is broken, so I'm glad they, like, fixed it, but they lowered the cost to make up for it, which is a big deal. It's a big deal. Yeah. And these abilities are interesting.

Rachel Weeks

They're not as punishing as Umizawi's jute, which has, like, removal and gain life. And the removal is the part where it's just like, why does it have removal? Removal? That just seems mean. Yeah.

The fact that you can just pick off creatures after that thing has died as bananas. But this has the target creature can't block this turn, so it gives removal if you're attacking. But I think the big thing to talk about here is the untapped target land. Yeah. Cause you can kind of store mana in this sword.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. You brought this up, and I didn't think about in these terms, but it's a smart way to think about it, which is like, it kind of makes each counter a treasure. Yeah. Like, at minimum a treasure because it taps for mana of any color, and it's like an expenditure of a resource. Right.

You take off the counter and you untap a land, and then you have to use that land right now. Otherwise, why'd you do that? Very similar to a treasure. Yeah. That's at a base level, obviously.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. And it gets even better the more powerful lands you have. So if you have a Nykthos, if you have a cabal coffers, if you have a guy's cradle, even, like a. Lotus veil or something. Yeah.

Anything that taps for more than one man, this gets better and better and better. Yeah. I like to run a lot of untappers and run bounce lands, and even those enchantments, like market festival, if you can make yourself a land that taps for four and then have two or three, even one or two things out that Untap lands. And this GTA, you could remove a counter, tap it, remove another counter, tap it, remove another counter, sorry, remove a counter, untap, and then tap it, obviously. So if you have a Nykthos and you can activate it three times, you're probably gonna win that turn.

Yeah, that's a wild turn. I mean, this card is so powerful. For those who haven't played with Umizawa's cheetah, it's combat damage of any kind. You don't have to hit a player. You could hit a creature, you could be blocking, you could be attacking.

It's anytime it deals any kind of combat damage. And once you get a couple counters on it, it's almost impossible to block. You don't even need the no block clause because once you've got four or five counters on it, anything they block with you go, cool, I'll just put counters on this thing to kill your thing. And you're not attacking the token player that's got chump blockers. You're attacking the player that's got only two important things and they don't want to lose them for free to your counters.

Josh Lee Kwai

Then it is a removal spell. So they're just like, no block. Get another counter. Now we can untap six or land six times and you're just waiting for that other shoe to fall. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

I mean, the power of Umizawis jite has always been threat of activation. Right. It's not necessarily the activation, although that is very powerful too. But the fact that they could do it means that you're not going to commit more creatures to the board. Means that you have to play on the back foot until that is gone.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yep. You can't play any small creatures. No. They're just so free to kill. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

Even the big ones you can't really block. Yeah. And this is not as good. Cause the modes are not as good. The life gain is sort of sneaky.

Josh Lee Kwai

Good on umuzawajite as just like you're losing game, but they just can't kill you. Yeah, but it can give you a lot of mana. So it might be able to do a little bit of an impression of a sword and feast and famine later in the game. But I think this is probably only playable. Like, if you've got some of the lands, like you said, I don't think you can just run this in a deck and be like, I'm gonna untap my basic lands or my, you know, my triomes, you know, that's not going to be impactful.

Enough, enough. I think you have to have cabal coffers, a nick, though, something like that. Something very high impact, but you have to have one or two of those. It's going to be great in the decks where you're running that little package where you, you know, you got an expedition map and you're going to go find your cabal coffers, and that's one of your game plans. Then this becomes quite good.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. I mean, there's just not many things in the game that can untap lands without paying any mana repeatedly in the same turn. Most of the time, you have to tap a thing to untap a land, and that happens, and this is a way to do that. It only really does something in the early game or if you have a creature on board, but, like, it's going to do a lot of work for you, and it's very, very low opportunity cost. And it's a hard thing for your opponents to interact with because you just hold the coffers right, and you're like, oh, GTA now has four counters on it that doesn't look that bad to people.

Josh Lee Kwai

And you go, coffers, tap it, untap it, tap it. Untap it. Tap it, untap it, tap it. Torment of hell fire. Done.

Yeah, right. Whatever. But it's just like, uh, exsanguinate. Ugh. It doesn't like their opportunity to interact with.

That was very low. Right. Very tough. They can't even kill the creature out from under it. Right.

It doesn't matter. Yeah. So it's the ability of the sword is removing the counters. Yeah. Really powerful.

Rachel Weeks

It's not as powerful as its big brother, but that shows how powerful the big brother was. It's gonna do a lot of work. Okay. All right. The next one is also an impression.

Of its big brother. Yep. Memory vessel it is. Three red. Red.

Josh Lee Kwai

For an artifact, you tap an exile memory vessel, and then each player exiles the top seven cards of their library until your next turn. Players may play cards they exiled this way, and they can't play cards from their hand. Activate only as a sorcery. It's worth noting both lost GTA and this card are available in the big score expansion. Those are just gonna be in the play.

Rachel Weeks

Boosters in the list slot have a different keyword or icon on them. Both reimagined fair versions of spooky cards from the past. Yeah. Boogeyman from the past. This is a new memory jar.

We've got them in a vessel now. Slightly less. Where's my memory? I thought. I swear I left it in this jar.

Nope. Nope. It's in these dice. I don't know. Those are totally dice.

Yeah. There's my Horcrux, my D and D dice. It's just one in each. Yeah. This is very interesting.

It's got a lot of fixes on it. It exiles itself. It is colored pips. It can't be activated at instant speed. Right?

Josh Lee Kwai

Yep. Yep. There's a lot of memory drawer is broken in so many ways. There's a lot of breaks. It also impulse draws instead of drawing.

Yep. To me, the biggest one and the biggest thing that kind of makes it. Cause remember jar, there's all kinds of loops and combos with it, obviously, but even at a base level, a really good usage of it was you play it, you wait till your next turn, you activate it, and now everybody sets their hand aside and picks up a new seven, which sounds like, hey, everybody got the same thing, but it's your turn, and you just untapped. Unless they didn't do anything on their turn and have a Vidalcon ori out, they're stuck with only the instance that they have mana to cast. So they draw kind of zero cards, maybe like one.

Rachel Weeks

It's basically like they mill seven, you draw seven. Yeah, they're gonna get those other ones back. But you drew seven, you cast those seven, then the turn ends, and you get the other cards you used to have back, and so do they. But they didn't get to use any of the cards in the interim. And that's just a very baseline scenario for memory jar.

Josh Lee Kwai

It just became a sort of draw seven, which is nuts. Nevermind that they didn't know, like, hey, don't make this recurable and other things. And then you can do stupid stuff like cyclonic rift, and then they have to discard all that stuff. Yeah. Like welder it in and out.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. Memory vessel has a lot of breaks on it to prevent it from being memory jar. But it does have some sort of interesting lines of text on it that I don't think I've ever seen. It says, so you keep these cards until your next turn, and so do all of your opponents. Yeah, that's what I guess I didn't explain that part.

Josh Lee Kwai

So the difference is here is like. Like, you impulse drop, but you don't go back to being able to play cards from your hand until your next turn. So Rachel gets to untap and use the seven cards she got, and then Jimmy gets to untap and use the seven cards he got. Then Megan gets to untap and uses the seven cards she got, and then it comes back to me, and now we can't use those cards anymore. Yeah.

It's until your next turn, not even the end. So. Yeah, that makes it a lot worse, because you. You're getting seven cards. Sure.

And you get them first. But everybody does get seven cards that they're gonna get played. Yeah. Seven fresh cards. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

The interesting thing about it is it says that they cannot play cards from their hand. That's weird. Which I don't think that's a line of text on any other magic card. I can't think of one. But it's so you can lock players out of their draw engines if you know that they have a scary card in their hand.

Josh Lee Kwai

Cause you bounce. If they tutored you can be like, yeah, you can cast that after you play with seven cards. So it does sort of trap them with seven for a full rotation. If you have any information about what's in their hand, it can be very, very powerful effect. And if they have any kind of onboard card draw engine, like a guardian project, or when they cast creatures, they're drawing extra cards.

Rachel Weeks

They're not getting any of that benefit for a full turn. They'll untap with a lot more cards. But I wonder if there's a way this is how my brain works to, like, somehow keep that part where they're like, and they can't play cards from their hands. I mean, it's. Players can't play cards, so you lock yourself out of it.

Josh Lee Kwai

That's a good point. Maybe I'm an impulsive draw deck. I'm prospero or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

You're benefiting from it. I don't know, but that's an interesting line. I mean, you could probably make token copies of this. Yeah, there you go. And that's how you sort of keep doing it.

Josh Lee Kwai

And if, you know, they sort of got specific, important things in their hand, you just lock it away for two or three turns, and that's probably enough. Yeah, that's cool. Like, the blue one that makes token copies of the thing it's in. Yeah. And just kind of do this every turn.

Maybe that's a way to kind of do it. That's kind of fun. I mean, it's a lot of hoops to jump through for to keep them from. To really frustrate Jimmy, but, like, you know, it might be worth it. Jimmy would jump through these hoops to frustrate you, Josh.

That's how we know we're friends. It's worth noting you can play this with a Dranath magistrate. You can cast the cards out of your hand. They can't cast the cards out of their. You know, they can't cast anything.

Can't play. Can't play. From exile. Ah ha. Got it.

Turns out Draymond Earth magistrate's pretty oppressive. Pretty good. All right, let's keep moving. This next card is pillage the bog. Black and a green for a sorcery.

Rachel Weeks

Look at the top x cards of your library, where X is twice the number of lands you control. Put one of them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. It has plot one, black, green. It's weird. It's a plot.

Josh Lee Kwai

Cost is more than it's mana cost. Yeah. Hypothetically, you plot it now, so you cast. It's more impactful when you have more lands later. So you would plot it, you know, when you have a spare three mana.

The longer you wait, the closer it gets to a tutor, I guess. Yeah. And I think that you see more and more lands. If you're in a ramp deck, obviously, you wait until you're like, I'm gonna cast explosive vegetation, extra turn. So I'm gonna wait.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah, yeah. There you go. I was trying to think of the one, the 116 lands in play. I look at the top 32. It just is a demonic tutor at that point.

Yeah, it's an interesting card because this looks like once upon a time, this looks like commune with nature. These kind of look at the top four and you get the best one where these sort of cantrips are more powerful in one v one magic. Yeah, we don't see them a lot in commander. Yeah, but this scales with the game a lot more. And because so many decks are based around getting more lands into play, the rampant growth and just basic land ramp that this scales almost exponentially with the game.

If you're a land ramp deck, so you can see more and more and more cards. If you're a combo deck and you're looking for specific pieces, or if you're looking for specific pieces that have redundancies, like a Ramion app excavator type effect, that you know that you've got three in the deck, looking at the top 15 is pretty good. If you're digging for a board wipe or a removal spell, this will find it. If you're like me and you don't play a lot of tudors, I like that. This is kind of a Tudor light where you're not finding exactly the card that you're looking for, but you're finding, like, a piece that you could use.

Josh Lee Kwai

Sure. I think that's like finding a loophole in my. I don't want to be tutors. Exactly. I can cheat myself.

Rachel Weeks

You have to put in work to make it a tutor. Right. Yeah. Do you think it's only playable in sort of land like decks that are heavily. Part of their plan is putting extra lance into play, I think.

Josh Lee Kwai

Could I play this in a deck that is just a normal green, black deck? It's got some ramp, but it's not trying to put a lot of extra land into play. It's just. It's got Rampergarth and cultivating. That's kind of it.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. I think if it's got land ramp in it, then, yeah. I would consider running this where it's just like, if you cast this on turn six for two mana, and you look at the top 12, 12, 14 cards of your library, that's pretty good. That's like, you're gonna see, you know, what, a fifth of your deck at some point, a 6th of your deck at that point. Sure.

Trying to think of how many cards you've drawn or milled or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Doing percentages is not my strongest. It's like a 6th. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. So I think if you're looking. If you're trying to assemble, like, I need this piece and I need this piece, and I need this piece, but there's redundancies in that. But it's very good at those kind of things. But, yeah, I was thinking about it, too, and I think Limdol's vault is kind of a little bit similar.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. I like this comparison. I like pillage of the Bach better because it puts it in your hand. It's true. Lymdol's vault is.

It's, like, scry a million, and your next draw is gonna be great. I'm not saying I like Limdoll's vault. No, I know. I never play it because. Mostly because it's just a lot of brain work.

Yeah, I agree. Just because you got to reorder the cards and you're not just thinking, oh, it's got a card I want. It's like, are these five better than the next five are gonna be? Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

Which is hard. Yeah. I don't know. I was just thinking of it as, like, there's a chance you're only gonna go so far. You're not.

Limdo's wall can be used to, like, find something specific. It can cost you a lot of life. But it can go find whatever you want for the most part. Whereas village of the bog is gonna whiff sometimes. It's not gonna whiff in that it will find you something.

But if you want something specific, even if you've got, got three Dunesy three Ramon apex elevator, crucible of worlds in your deck, some amount of time, it will not hit that because they just won't be in the top ten or twelve of your deck. I don't see. I don't. But this is the difference between you and me. I don't love, like, not being pretty sure I know what my card's gonna do.

I don't like tutors either. I would just rather run a draw spell. Sure. Yeah. Because if I at least have a card that says draw three or draw whatever, I know, you know, Knight's whisper or something, I know what I'm gonna get and I know what role it's filling.

Like, ambiguous to me, where. To the point where I'm like, I don't know. If I categorize this as tutor, I guess it's not really card draw. I don't really know what. It's a cantrip rule.

It feels. I'm way more comfortable dumping this on turn two to hit a land drop than I would be a demonic tutor. But if I put in my cantrip, in my head, I'm like, well, why am I paying two for a cantrip? I don't want that. Eh, it draws you, you see a.

Lot more, but then it's. Yeah, then it's a tutor, but it's. Man, I wish stuff. This went to the graveyard. I wish the game had been designed more in this direction where I was forced to play more cards that had variants to them.

I think that would be fun, but it's not. They've given me so many precise ones, precise ones over the years that I have to be, like, literally choosing this over ones that are precise. And it's hard for me to make my brain wanna do that. I like this more than insatiable avarice just as a card. I think I do too, which is funny, because that is a tutor and a draw spell.

Rachel Weeks

And I like the efficiency of this. I like that it's just gonna make your deck work better, which is what can trips are designed to do. Cool. Let's keep moving. All right, the next one is pitiless carnage.

Josh Lee Kwai

Three in a black for sorcery, silly name, sacrifice any number of permanents you control, then draw that many cards, tweet, and it has plot for one black. Black. That's pretty cool. Yeah. The plot here makes a ton of sense because often it's got, obviously, comparisons to Bantu God, eternal bantu, and reprocess.

And those cards can be very good in the right circumstances. But one of the downsides is, especially if you end up sacrificing lands to them, which sometimes you do want to do, you spend so much mana on to get the effect that, like, yeah, you draw 710, 1215 cards, but you don't have a lot of resources left to deploy the cards you just drew. And plotting this pretty early in the game and then just waiting till you got enough stuff and casting it for free means like, oh, that's a totally different scenario. Yeah. This is the kind of effect that your opponents forget about.

Rachel Weeks

You said it on, plot on turn three or four, and slowly accrue resources until you can slam this and it's free. Yeah, you've drawn twelve cards, you have twelve new cards. You probably got sacrifice triggers off of all that. This is just another one of these effects. I would reply, probably got eternal bond two over it because of the efficiency I think really matters more than the body, at least in most decks, unless you're trying to loop it.

Yeah, these effects are really, really powerful. If you're making stuff, then this is going to turn all your junk into. Cards, into more junk that you can then cash in again later.

All right, up next, we have another plot card. This is railway brawler three green. Green for a rhino warrior with reach and trample. He's a five five. Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, x one one counters on it.

Where x is its power, it is plot three in a green. So you can plot it with four mana, and then you can cast it for free. The next turn, follow it up with a creature, double something's power immediately. This is sort of the Guardian project thing I was talking about earlier, where you're like, it has a very powerful ability, but you're not guaranteed to untap with it unless you save him and plan for him, plot him. Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

And that one makes sense to me. There is the downside that you are not getting to attack with it on the next turn. But the upside of it wasn't vulnerable during that time is pretty worth it, especially if you set up a turn where you know you're gonna cast, get a couple of creatures out. Right? You're gonna cheat something out.

That falling turn, maybe I was gonna. Say that like a sneak attack. Whoa. Yeah. Wouldn't that be nuts?

Yeah, it's like, oh. Cause that'd be a really hard sequence to pull off mana wise with the five CMC. Right. But not. Not.

Here you go. Plot. Next turn. I have five mana. I do this sneak attack and can activate the sneak attack maybe twice.

That's huge. Because they're huge. They're twice as big. Yeah. It's the difference between a 1010 thing and a 2020 thing.

Rachel Weeks

And this kind of effect we are already playing. Right, on natural growth doubles the power, but this is a permanent effect. This doubling is really, really powerful. And I think it's really good with commanders that care about power or of naturally high power where it's more impactful, especially if it fits in that curve. You want to do the four mana to plot the railway brawler, then pay zero and follow it up with your commander.

These are the commanders that I pulled for. They're not super popular commanders, but they give you an idea of what it's good with. Like Tanazir Quandrix cares about its power and cares about counters. It's also a five drop. So it says whenever this attacks, you may have the base power and toughness of other creatures you control.

Become equal to Tanizer Quandrick's power and toughness until end of turn. That is a terrifying sequence of events. So it comes in and becomes an eight eight and then turns everything else. Into eight eight into base eights. Yeah.

And then counters are even more powerful. So, I mean, those kind of things are something like a drizzt Doherdan, which comes in and makes the cat. Now you have two things that come in and get twice as many. Counters just got double strikes. So it's almost like putting three times so much more.

Yeah, yeah. I loved that curve. I was like, oh, I gotta build this trip.

Josh Lee Kwai

Big numbers. Yeah, yeah. I don't tend to play a lot of counter decks, but I think this is the interesting thing about this card is not the ability, which is powerful. It's gonna be really good in plus one counter decks. Really good in power decks.

Rachel Weeks

It's the fact, like, what plot does when it's on a permanent like this. Yeah. So I wanna take a quick second to talk about plot, especially as it relates to permanent versus non permanent effects. Cause railway brawler, the payoff is obvious, but the downside is also very obvious. Can't attack with your five five, but you're guaranteed to at least get one thing out of it, right?

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. Can't block with it either, right? Yeah. But then with sorceries, the payoff is obvious. You can just spend it when it's valuable.

Rachel Weeks

But the downside is everybody knows it's coming. Right. Interesting. That's the downside with the creature too. They know it's coming.

That's true. Yeah. But it's, they're less impactful, it seems like. Right. It feels like plot is most powerful in decks that just are planning for a big turn where I'm gonna cheat a ton of stuff into play.

I'm gonna make a ton of stuff on endstep, and I'm gonna. There's gonna be one turn that changes the pace of this deck. Yeah. You're setting up for. Yeah, you're setting up for, you know, sort of a lot to happen all at once.

Josh Lee Kwai

And I think the thing that's easy to forget about plot two is you don't have to cast it on the next turn. Yeah. Now this card, you probably do, but not all of them do you want to. And you can throw your opponents off a lot by them just being sort of ready. And so it is possible to punish them for the play pattern of their, like, cool.

I know that things coming. I'm just gonna hold up my removal or my counter spell. And you're like, I don't unplot, don't execute the plot. I don't execute the plot. I do something else.

Rachel Weeks

And they're like, yeah, I held up all my mana. Now I have to do that again. Do I have to kill the thing they just played, even though that thing looks scarier? And will they do that again next turn? Yeah.

Josh Lee Kwai

So I think if you're afforded the ability to sort of play mind games in that way, it becomes a lot better as well. Yeah, I agree. All right, back to spree. Okay. This is a very josh card.

It is return the favor. Red. Red for an instant. But it has spree plus one generic mana is copy target instant spell, sorcery activated ability or triggered ability. You may choose new targets for the copy.

So fork something. Yeah. Notably activated and trigger abilities, which are not usually on cards like that. And then its second option is one, change the target of target spell or ability with a single target. So you can retarget something.

So you can do both, obviously. You can say, cool, you sword supplaushare my thing, or you went to and I pay four man out. I point your swords at your own thing, and I make a copy of the swords and actually kill two of your things. Ha ha. Return the favor.

Yeah, I had this in a limited deck, and it's broken. It seems really, really powerful. I mean, it's nice that you can. If somebody casts swords on somebody else's stuff thing, you're like, oh, cool, I'll borrow that and send it over there as well. But you also have the option to use it defensively.

Yeah, it's a three for one. Yeah, because they go to kill your thing, so they lose that card and you end up killing two of theirs. For your one card, it's a back breaking when you catch a removal spell, and that's the kind of base level of it you can. Obviously, there's a lot of flexibility to cards like this. They can even be used against counter spells to count, you know, redirect the counter spell to something else.

You know, you can just counter a counter with this by either copying the counter and countering their counter, or just retargeting their counter to this spell either way. So that's a red way to get around a counter spell. I think it's got a lot of flexibility. I think it's got a lot of utility in commander, the biggest question is, can you hold up three or four red mana? And you really want to hold up four?

Rachel Weeks

You really do, because the card is worth four. I think it feels like a wild ricochet that in an emergency you can cast it for one fewer. But the scenarios where you'd want to do that are a lot slimmer. And I think that's the risk because it's similar to what we just said about plot, honestly. Yeah, you can hold this up, but what if they don't sword some plowshares?

Josh Lee Kwai

What if they don't do anything? They just cast creatures or artifacts, and you're just like, crap. I was expecting them to whatever. Do you just waste the formana, it goes to your turn, and you just untap and you didn't cast anything. So it's like we always say with stuff like this, and we always say it because it's true.

You have to be playing. Your deck needs to want to play at instant speed and have other options of things to do so that you're in the scenario where you're like, oh, I didn't have to return the favor. I'll cast this draw spell. Yeah. And then I'll just hold this up again next turn.

And eventually the odds are gonna turn out where, like, somebody's gonna do something at some point during this game that I'm gonna wanna do this to. And, you know, if I'm just poison ready, but if I just waste that four mana, two or three turns in a row, I'll also just lose the game that way. So, yeah, I would say I think this is a better fork than a protection spell. If I was really leaning on it for like, the swat effect, I would rather run deflecting SWAT or even bolt bend to protect my creature. Cause it's easier to hold up nothing or one mana.

Rachel Weeks

It is to repeatedly hold up three in case of interaction. Yeah. And you can use the fork part proactively. So I think your deck needs to want or has to have some stuff you would want to fork as well. If you.

Josh Lee Kwai

If you would just never envision a scenario where you fork your own thing, then you don't play this card. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I also think this is kind of like the crackling spell slinger, where there's just a limited amount of slots in your deck for stuff like this. And really, it's like two.

It's not. It's kind of a do nothing instant, which is interesting. Yeah. You have a deflecting squat and this, or deflecting SWAT and fury storm, or deflecting, you know, whatever it is. And I think I probably prefer Fury storm just as a card that I love and will steal games out of nowhere because somebody does some big incident and you're like, or big sorcery or whatever, and you're like, sweet.

I get three of those, you know, and they're like, but it was torment of hill. Yeah, you're dead. You guys all die before you know, yours resolves. Yeah, that kind of stuff. And you're like, you did it to yourself.

Sheldon taught me that. Right? Yeah. And this can do a little bit of an impression of that, so it. Definitely has some utility.

Rachel Weeks

I think it's a cool fork and a over costed protection spell, but it does both, so that's fun. The next one, you definitely will feel cool. Sometimes when you get people and they, you know, it's the type of thing. Where they're like, I'd like to return the fate. This next one is smuggler surprise.

It's another spree spell. It's green as a mana value. It's an instant. You can pay an additional two to mill four cards and put up to two creature and or land cards from among the milled cards into your hand. You can pay an additional four and a green.

You can put two creature cards from your hand onto the battlefield. Remember, it's an instant. Wow. You can pay an additional one, colorless to give creatures you control with power four or greater hex proof and indestructible until end of turn. That's a lot.

Those are all good things. Yeah. It's interesting because I think all the spree cards we've talked about before, all the modes are kind of related, and you can envision how a leads to b leads to c. Maybe if I only want to do c, that's fine, but they're interconnected. This one, it doesn't feel that way.

Like a or B or c. It really does feel separate. It's very few. It seems unlikely that I want to mill four cards, return two things to my hand, and give my stuff hex proof and indestructible. And you technically can mill two, draw two, and hope you get two creatures that you'll want to cheat into play.

Josh Lee Kwai

But that's very risky. I would rather just know they're there. Yeah. You paid one, two, three. Wait.

Rachel Weeks

Green, green plus six. You paid eight mana to hope you hit. Yeah. You should have the two good creatures in your hand, and maybe you're like, I just have the extra mana. I will draw the two.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. A card that has vastly different modes. Cause it could be three spells that feel like three separate spells. Yeah.

Which one of these modes do you think is the reason you play it, though? Cheat the creatures into play? I think for sure the instant speed is nuts. Instant speed. If you can end step Nyx blue mansion with something else.

Rachel Weeks

That's bananas, right? If you can end step, even just. Two huge old nabo Nick Nyx blumention. Yeah. Now it can attack immediately.

Josh Lee Kwai

The cheating into play is kind of nuts for the cost. At instant speed. Six mana at instant speed. You have to have them in your hand, but, like, it doesn't seem that hard in a green stompy deck. I definitely think I picture this in a big mana green deck.

Rachel Weeks

Like, probably dinosaurs. Anything that's intended to just use a ton of mana. Cause this gives you an ability to do all of them. This is probably great in Jimmy's raga draga deck. Oh, yeah.

He's got a ton of mana. He wants to be able to use it as a big spell, but it can be a draw spell early if he hasn't gotten set up. And if you get a late. You just draw also. Yeah.

Then you dump all your mana into this. You draw, you cheat some stuff into play, you give yourself indestructible and then swing. Yeah. I mean, you can even just like, just one creature. Just get Italy out there.

Sure. On instant speed. On your instep. Yeah. Okay.

That seems good. Yeah. Yeah. This card's sweet. It's gonna be interesting to see where it winds up.

I think big mana decks are the most natural home. All right, the next one, there's a new sword of. Yeah, we thought they were done. Yeah. Right.

Josh Lee Kwai

Well, this one kind of proves the cycle could go on for a while. It's a sword of wealth and power. It's Dominic Mayer art. And it looks sweet. It does.

It's three mana for an equipment equipped creature. Gets two. Two. And has protection from instants and sorceries. Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player.

Create a treasure token. When you next cast an instant or sorcery spell, this turn, copy that spell, you may choose new targets for the copy and then has equipped two. Has all sorts, sort of. Yeah. Three to cast, two to equip.

Rachel Weeks

Some interesting upsides. I think this has better protection than most swords. Protection from incense and sorceries, worse evasion than most swords because it doesn't have protection from any colors. And that often matters because you often equip the sword and there is a player that you can just attack for. Free that won't block.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. Or can't you just eliminate enough creatures. From being able to block that? There's often a very clear, like if you, you know, they either can't block it all or just anything that could, will die. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

So there's definitely some, some upsides here. The abilities are sort of interesting. There's one so that you can either make a treasure or you do both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You make a treasure and you copy the next thing you cast on your.

Josh Lee Kwai

You fork. The next thing you cast, this turn. Yeah, those are powerful.

Rachel Weeks

I think this is too expensive for these abilities. And it has the problem, I think, of sort of once in future, which is an equipment that cares about instants and sorceries, and it's just you're asking your deck to do so many things. You need to have a creature that can attack and not only attack, connect, probably hazovation, naturally, in order to deal combat damage with this thing, and then you have to have an incident and sorcery that is good to fork. Plus you need to have cast it for three mana and equipped it for two. Yeah, this is pretty difficult.

Josh Lee Kwai

Not impossible to get full value out of the turn. You play it. Yeah. One of the reasons why fire and ice and feast and famine are just hard to supplant as the best two, I guess. Hearth and home and scarring the next.

And again, you just need a creature to blink and then you. You're gonna get value. This one's tougher because a treasure token alone, definitely not worth the sword. Way cheaper equipment that does just that. Yeah, right.

Like, you put some down. Like Beamtown beat stick and gold vein pick. Both are just better at just making treasures, if that's what you want to do. And nobody plays those cards. Yeah.

So you really have to want the fork in order to make this worth it. But if you do want that fork, it's very powerful because it suddenly turns into something that gives you, you know, five, six, seven mana worth of stuff. And you know that card, basically. So it plays and casts a card, kind of. So if you have extra turn spells, which I know a lot of people don't like, but if you have them, this card could be nuts because.

Rachel Weeks

Very powerful. Yeah. Not only that, it. So you attack, you make the treasure. And I think the evasion thing, it's a good point.

Josh Lee Kwai

I hadn't really thought about it. In general, the two plus two will hopefully give you an opening and later game. Maybe not. But, you know. And you have your commander, presumably.

So I think in a lot of instances, just the power bump from the sword will get you in for the first swing. Not always, though, but you swing, then you cast a time warp, it's probably over. Yeah. I mean, that's two extra turns. Plus you're equipped and can copy more things.

Exactly. And that's the problem, I think, is like, oh, if I had one extra turn, I might have more, and if not, I have other things. And because I already had an attack that got in, I'm probably getting in. I'm getting the treasures. I'm getting two extra turns, two extra swings, two extra copies of two other things.

That's pretty Narsetti. Yeah. I mean, this seems incredible. In a narset deck, you're already designed to attack. She's got first strike, so now she's a high five.

Rachel Weeks

First strike. She's enormous. And you're set up to already cast really powerful instants and sorceries for free. So you're gonna cast another one. And then, yeah, you're just gonna get, like, two extra combats.

But, like, if you're building and playing Narset, I don't know if you put this in. I don't know if this gets a slot. Yeah, maybe not. I think. Yeah, I don't even know if you would play it in Narset.

Josh Lee Kwai

Cause if you swung with Narset, you already have done what you want. Yeah. Yeah. Most narset deckers will win on the. Yeah, yeah.

To me, it's protection for your thing. It's definitely that. And, you know, you have to want your commander around. And it's pretty good protection. It doesn't protect from certain things, but in general, instant sorceries are the most likely way that your creature's gonna die.

And then you just have to have like, you know, six to eight high impact instants and sorceries that exist in your deck. And, you know, we keep talking about them, but if it's just because will, you know, mana geysers, another really good one, torment of hellfire. Any extra turn spells, big impactful instance in sorcery and they have to be proactive. One sublime epiphany doesn't really work because if you don't get the countering, then you're really just copying a thing and drawing a card and doing that twice is not as good. But if we're talking things that are five ish mana worth of instant sorcery and Jessica's will, let's be honest, is like, should have cost five probably.

Yeah, yeah. Then forking, that is extremely powerful. And I believe that it's probably worth it. But it's gotta be a spellslinger's deck that fits that scenario. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Weeks

It's an interesting card. I can't wait until the protection from instants and creatures soared. Protection from planeswalkers and enchantments. That's the one I'm looking forward to.

Mine's protection from battles.

All right, we're back to spree. This spell is called three steps ahead. It's a single blue for an instant. With spree, you can add an additional one in a blue to counter target spell. So it's cancel.

You can add an additional three colorless to create a token that's a copy of target artifact or creature you control. Sweet. You add an additional two color list to draw two cards and then discard a card. Speaking of sublime epiphany. Yeah, she's here and she's been broken down into a few pieces.

This is what I like about this, especially when compared to sublime epiphany, is sublime epiphany. You're like, okay, when I get to. Six mana, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be really good. But I can't do that yet.

But in the meantime, this is nothing. Yeah, yeah. I mulliganed until that moment. Yeah, this is like, ah, if you. Really have to, you can just cancel something.

Yeah. You know, if you have something that you can make a token copy of. Then you're like, great on my instep. I'll make another sol ring. That should be fine.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. Or I'll make a soul ring and I'll draw two cards. I don't know, go nuts.

Rachel Weeks

This modality of, like, I can hold up a cancel when I'm ahead and I can do this, like, chart, of course ish. The draw two, discard one. If I need to hit a land drop or I need to burn this early, it's like, I do not. I am too far behind to hold up interaction right now. I have to use my draw now to start building my own resources.

Means it is really flexible when you're ahead and when you're behind, which is what's the nice thing about these free cards. Yeah, we talked about that in the goldfishing episode. How I, like, I don't want my duck to have to do it, but I know that it will sometimes need to be able to scramble to, like, pull the rip cord and do some stuff. It doesn't that are off plan to be able to hit its land drops. And this card has that on it already, even though that's not the main reason.

Josh Lee Kwai

Maybe you play it. So I do like that ability, and it all adds up to a lot of flexibility. Yeah, I think this is totally playable. I think it's absolutely playable. I think the more cost reducers you have, the better.

Rachel Weeks

Like this in a Mizix deck or in a Magnus, the red deck, because you can reduce kicker costs, you can reduce spree costs. So you can cut this all the way down to blue, blue counter, target spell, make a copy of something. Draw two, discard one. If you're in a deck like Kaza royal shaper or something like that, where you're really trying to reduce the cost of your spells, this is gonna get even, even better. But again, so is sublime epiphany and probably mystic compliments.

Nice flexible counter spells. I love those two cards, though. So anything that's comparing to them, I'm like, I'm in. Yeah. Somebody told me recently that mystic confluence was too expensive to play, and I was like, mmm, I don't think so.

Josh Lee Kwai

I don't know. I like it. But have you ever just bounced three things? Bounce, bounce, draw card. Sometimes it's literally a bounce through things, and your opponents are just like, I lost.

I lost you. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

I love mystic hopworks, man. I'm excited about this next card. This next card is good. Yeah, I think it's sweet. It's good.

Josh Lee Kwai

It's very simple, but it's good. Tower winder. One in a green for a one. One snake with reach and death touch. And it says, when it enters the battlefield, search your library and or graveyard for a card named command Tower.

Reveal it and put it into your hand. And then if you search your library. Shuffle. Best land in the game. Command tower.

It's pretty close.

Rachel Weeks

I mean, this is awesome. It's such a little body. That fixes you for your three color commander, probably. And it's a stop sign. Yeah, it just says, look elsewhere.

I think this guard's really neat. And the thing that really made me confirmed that it was very good is looking at it next to baleful Strix. Cause baleful Strix is put in every blue black deck. If it was mono black, it'd be in all the black decks. It's just color restricted, so we don't see it as much.

But that card's insane, and that's flying. Deathtouch draw card. And this is reach Deathtouch draw land. But draw a very specific land. But, yeah, it's not as good as bale for Strix, though, right?

It's not. But that's the closest comparison, which says it's pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. It's like, you can't blink it as much.

It's not as good as, like, ninjas and stuff, but I love that it has reach in a green deck. This is perfect. Yeah. What'll happen is you'll play this. You'll get your land, and you just won't get attacked for, like, the first five turns.

Josh Lee Kwai

That's how bailiff's tricks works. It's the greatest. This is a green ghostly present. Yeah, that's how it works. You just play it, and you just.

Rachel Weeks

And then somebody spends a removal spell on it, and you're like, ha. Yeah, you had to remove my gummy worm. I don't even care. I got the land, and I protected me for already. For how many turns?

Yeah, I think this card's gonna be really, really powerful if you're playing a green deck, especially with, like, a four man, a commander, where you really need that last land or that last color to hit your land. Rob, to play your commander, it's gonna feel really good. Yeah, I think it's a great card. Okay, we're almost there. A much bigger green card.

We have two more cards left. This one's you. This is vault born tyrant. This is from the big score. It's five green.

Green for a dinosaur, it's a six six with trample. When it or another creature with power four or greater enters the battlefield under your control, you gain three life and draw a card. Then when it dies, if it's not a token, create a token that's a copy of it, except it's an artifact. In addition to its other token, there's a dinosaur that comes in, gains you three life, draws a card, and then when it dies, you gains you three life, and you draw another card. When it dies, you like, excavate its bones maybe, and put it in a museum.

You bronze it, you stuff it and put it on your mantle. It is cool that it sort of protects itself in that way. Yeah, I know. Cause it's a big investment. It is a big investment.

I mean, and we've talked about these kind of things where it's like if you pay seven mana, you really want something like displace dinosaurs. Yes. Is a seven mana dinosaur that says, okay, now if you do more stuff, it's gonna be great. Right? And that's what this says, but it also says if there's a board wipe, don't worry, I'll still be here.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, I'll stick around. Which is, I think, nice for your seven mana thing to not be easily removed. Although, you know, there's, there's exile and everything. We bounce and exile all sorts of things, but board wipes in general tend to destroy still, whereas single target removal, we've moved a lot away from that. There's not a ton left that destroys.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. Yeah. I think this card is really powerful in decks that are already trying to cheat huge things into play, especially if you're trying to cheat a lot of big things into play at the same time. Obviously if you're doing dinosaur stuff like Gishath, that puts a ton of dinosaurs into play, you're gonna draw some additional cards off of it. But even like an Atla Polani that already has sac outlets and maybe can take advantage of that big token.

The only other place that I thought it would be kind of neat is places that can take advantage of the token it leaves behind. Because the token it leaves behind. Sick. Yeah. If you can copy that token.

Yeah. So new Ghirard could do it, or old Girid. I would have to die to something that didn't kill Garud, but. Right, so you need, you would need a sack outlet or something like that. Or a board wipe.

And then you follow it up with your garud. Yeah. You populate it in some way. Yeah. Because now you're drawing, when it enters, you're drawing from the other one that you have, like, if you can make that token and start moving, that is an extremely powerful chance.

Josh Lee Kwai

That's cool. It costs seven mana. I don't like my seven mana cards to be set up cards. I want them usually to be payoff cards. Yeah, but it'd be sweet.

Rachel Weeks

Picture it on your mantle, Josh. I wish you just drew a card for creatures. Henry, why does it have to be four power or greater? Like, come on, I paid seven for seven. Yeah, just.

Josh Lee Kwai

Can't it just also be a beast whisperer? That seems fair. That thing only cost four. Josh, he's a dinosaur. He doesn't know any creatures with powerless.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. What? Because they're all down there going like, Richard. Yeah, they're all down there going like, don't move. He can't see you if you don't move.

He's standing. His vision's based on movement.

His card's cool. If you're cheating big things into play, it's a great draw engine for that. If you're not cheating big things into play, it's probably a little too expensive. All right, we're down to the last one here. Yeah, it is world Walker helm.

Josh Lee Kwai

It's two in a blue for an artifact. But if you would create one or more artifact tokens, create instead create those tokens plus an additional map token. Remember, maps are the one that you sacrifice to explore, and as an activated ability one in blue, tap it, create a token that's a copy of target artifact token you control. So you can obviously make a token copy of something, and then it will see that itself and make an extra map token. Yeah, it's.

Rachel Weeks

Are you making stuff? Make more stuff? Yeah. You have put down academy manufacturer as a comp, which I believe is sort of what it is. This is in blue, and it has that activate ability.

Josh Lee Kwai

Academy manufacturer does not create any tokens on its own. Right, whereas this will, although you have to already have one token to kind of get it going. Yeah. It's not quite a do nothing artifact. It's close.

I mean, academy manufacturer is insane. So. Yeah, this is not academy manufacturer. It's certainly not as explosive as academy manufacturer. But especially if you're making, like, one token at a time, this is very good.

Rachel Weeks

If you have, like, a. When this happens, make a clue. You're gonna be making a lot of maps. Yep. But if you have stuff that says, like, make six tokens for the number of things, then you're only gonna make one map instead of six maps.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. That's rare, though. Yeah, I'd say these types of things are usually created in singles. Treasure's not as much, but, yeah, if. You have in blue, I guess it's harder to make treasures.

Rachel Weeks

I'm trying to think of a blue treasure, commander, off the top of my head. No, you're usually paired with something else. Yeah, it's usually something else, but your clue stuff or your food stuff, if you're making a lot of that stuff, that just gives you more rectangles. Yeah, it's rectangle theory, I think. This thing's got it written all over it, which is.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, it just adds an additional rectangle when you make other rectangles. Yeah, and that's very powerful. You've called them tchotchke decks, which I like just a ton of. Doesn't matter what they are. They're here.

Those decks that are just, you know, they got KCI or they've got, you know, what's the one where you tap two artifacts and deal damage to something? Or they're just saying, or. Whenever an artifact enters the battlefield, deal one damage to your opponents. Yeah, exactly. That's where this is gonna be most at home.

Rachel Weeks

And you're gonna cast a rise and shine, and they're all gonna wake up, and it doesn't matter if they're a map or a clue or a treasure. Your opponents are dead. Yeah, you're just like, I don't care what each of these things are. They just are artifacts, and I will use them in different ways for things that care about sacrificing or when they enter or whatever, you know, some sort of toggo partner pairing with blue. And you're like, every time I play a land now, I get a map.

Josh Lee Kwai

Ana rock. Cool. And then, yeah, that kind of stuff. Is it landfall? Cool.

Is it landfall? Yes, it is. It is. Oh, it isn't? So it might not be.

See, unfortunately, you got to pair it with thracios to get the green for the landfall. There you go. But now it's like, well, it's a thracios deck. No, that's boring. It's not a toggle deck.

Rachel Weeks

All right, those are the cards that we're gonna talk about from Thunder Junction, from the big score, from all of the commander decks. There's a lot of really sweet things. We talked a lot about spree. I think that flexibility is so nice, and a lot of the time when we talk about modal spells, we're like, is it worth the extra mana? And spree doesn't guarantee that it's worth that.

You have to spend extra mana, which is really cool. You don't have to. You get that flexibility while staying efficient. Yeah, I like that a lot. I think this is the second set in row where we've talked about maybe the third where, like, there's a lot of good stuff in here and a lot of playable stuff, but nothing feels, like broken.

I agree. So I really think that the design team's been doing a good job giving us fun new toys to play with, but not giving us stuff that is going to warp the format a lot. There's no smothering ties or tofarious protection, at least that I can obviously see or that we obviously see here. So there's always the chance for something to sort of be sneakily broken, but no, Jessica's will, you know, which I think is good for the format, and that is increasingly difficult for them to pull off as they have to design new cards. And there's only so many little nooks and crannies that haven't been filled in before.

Josh Lee Kwai

So I want to give them props for, you know, doing a really good job, making us excited, giving us new toys, but making it feel like, oh, this is all within the wheelhouse of what we like. Yeah. And isn't gonna, like, you know, ruin a lot of games or anything. All that being said, what was your favorite card for in the 99 from this set? I had a hard time picking my favorite one.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. I wasn't sure there wasn't a ton of Josh cards. Well, and I think there was a lot that I like, but there wasn't anything where I was like, I love that. I think, you know, return the favor was the most Joshy card. But also, there's enough stuff like that where I was like, you know, I don't even know if I'll play it just because it's existed in other forms before.

Josh Lee Kwai

I think last was the one that I'm excited. I like untapping stuff. Specifically land. Yeah, specifically. Specifically.

Yeah. And it's explosive a little bit. Can be a little bit sneaky. We didn't even talk about proliferating on that sword. That's kind of fun.

Yeah, that's true. So, yeah, I think it's weird to say in equipment, but that's what I'm saying. How about you? What's your favorite card? Yeah.

Rachel Weeks

All the way back to the first card. I think angel of indemnity is the card I'm most excited to play. That's the one that people will die to that they don't know that they died to which is cool. Yeah. That card's sweet.

Josh Lee Kwai

It's a very Rachel card. It is. I picked a very Rachel card. What do you think is the most powerful card in the 99 from Thunder Junction? This was tricky because there's a lot of flexible cards in Thunder Junction, but none of them are strictly very, very power level, high impact cards.

Rachel Weeks

So I think if you're talking about the flexibility type stuff, then there's a lot of options. I think the card that's most likely to do the biggest things in commander is probably Kumbal. I think when that card comes down across from you and you're playing, you make anything. You have to completely reevaluate what is going on on your board. And it's a hate bear for a casual strategy, which is not something that we've seen a lot of.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah, I mean, it's not even really a hate bear. It doesn't stop them. It doesn't stop them. It just says, hey, careful. Which is in many ways, I think, to people's detriment because they unfortunately make bad decisions where they shouldn't be playing any cards that make tokens when that thing's out for the most part.

But they will. Cause they'll think, well, they get it, too, but I still get it. But you're really making that other person win because you're spending resources to get the things you're getting. They're not. And that advantage, you know, if you give it to them a couple of times, it's just gonna be too big to overcome.

So. Yeah, I like cards that punish my opponents for making bad decisions. That is what, you know, that's what magic's about. Yeah, absolutely. And that's way more fun than cards that just say, hey, you can't.

Rachel Weeks

Yeah. If you would make tokens, don't. Yeah. Like, everyone would just hate that card. Yeah, but this says, like, all right, you can do it, but me, too.

Josh Lee Kwai

Yeah. The most powerful is always a difficult question, because how you define most powerful is tough. Right? Is it the most powerful a card can be when it's at its most powerful? It.

You know what its average power is. If you average. If you take everything's average, what's the highest average? I think by that measure, I would pick final showdown as the most powerful of the bunch. We talked about today in that.

I think if you. My prediction from this set, what's the card we will see in play the most? It's tower winder or this, probably. And final showdown. I just think it's so, so good.

It just has so many great uses and I think most decks with white in it will want to run this card. The instant speed on is amazing. The protection, the fact that it's a boardwalk. Plus I keep my best thing a lot of times and just save myself from weird stuff in a pinch. Like, it can stop a lot of combos that are happening.

So, you know, which, that's not the way you want to use it, but hey, if you're gonna die. So, yeah, that would be my prediction for like, most played card from this set. I'm most excited to have in my hand, I think. Yeah, because it is gonna be give you a lot of choices and make you feel really in control of your position. It's a card that makes you feel very safe, which makes it very cool white card, I think.

Yeah. And as we're moving towards a world where myself, at least I'm going like, I need to put a couple more board wipes back into my decks. Oh, it's cool to have a really good one that just came out. Absolutely. It's funny that you have to be afraid of somebody having seven white mana up now and not seven blue mana.

That's true. You're like, what? You crap? Your mono white deck. What do you possibly have crap?

I know what you've got. What do I do about that? To the listeners, what do you think about this set? Anything you're excited about it, hopefully. We talked about the cards you're most excited about, but if we didn't leave a comment down below, we read all of those and like to engage.

Rachel Weeks

So what new cards did we talk about or are in this set? Slot perfectly into your existing commander decks. Are there any cards from the set that you think are awesome in commander that we didn't talk about? There's so many, it's really hard to slim it down, especially when there's outlaws. Reanimate all your outlaws and you're like, that's really good.

In an outlaw deck. If you want to pick up any of the cards that we talked about today, or any of the precons or any of the sealed product, get some play boosters, go to cardkingdom.com command. You're magic players. We know you're going to buy magic cards, especially in this exciting time when cards are new. Go pick up the singles, get yourself a couple of final showdowns.

Get a lost g tay. Tower winder. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Get the angel of indemnity. Yeah, I'm gonna have to buy like three tower winders.

Josh Lee Kwai

You know, the cards we chose for favorite and everything were all had white in them except for last GTA, which could go in white deck. Yeah, I meet. And it's a good equipment. You can find it in white decks. Yeah, white's getting a lot of fun toys lately, and card Kingdom has a huge selection of cards, so you can pick up all of those.

Rachel Weeks

Maybe it's time for you to build a white deck. Maybe this is the moment you want to build, like a mono white flash deck with the new aven interrupter. I'm not ready for go mono. You could do it, Josh. We're going to do an extra turn where I just pass you a mono white.

Josh Lee Kwai

I played one of your decks before, so. Yeah, yeah, I don't mind that. Yeah, all right. Of course. Kingdom.com command.

Yeah, once you get those cards, make sure that you keep them protected. Ultra Pro is the game accessories brand that we trust. Our own collections here at the command zone. If you go to ultrapro.com command, you can get all kinds of awesome deals on their website for all kinds of stuff like binders and deck boxes and sleeves and play mats. They got wall scrolls, they got dice.

If you need it to play the game or make your battlefield look awesome, Ultra bro has it again. Ultra bro.com command. Big thank you to our amazing team here at the command zone. Thanks to Damon Lentz, Eric Lem, Megan Yip, Garav, Galadi, Jordan Pridgen, Jamie Block, Arthur Medicroft, Manson Lung, Josh Murphy, Jake Boss, Sam Waldo, Evan Limberger, Katie Cole, Mitch Trafford, and of course, Jimmy Wong. Thanks for listening, guys.

Rachel Weeks

Hope you're enjoying Thunder junction. We'll see you next time. Peace. Yee haw.

Thank you for your attention. Further inquiries, send an email to commandcastocketjump.com. Or ask us on Twitter and joshleekwai. See you later, alligator. Greetings, human.

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The Best Cards (In the 99) from Outlaws of Thunder Junction | 604

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1: Introduction and Sponsor Acknowledgment

2: Detailed Card Analysis

3: Strategic Insights

4: Listener Questions and Episode Wrap-Up

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