Sets are flying onto the shelves these days. It feels like yesterday I was looking at MH3 previews, and as of today, almost the entire Bloomburrow set is available. Let's go over some standout cards.
Sunspine Lynx
Sunspine Lynx is like a mash-up of Siege Rhino and Sulfuric Vortex rolled into one giant package.
I absolutely love this card. It's not broken, but it's not bad; it's a perfectly solid creature that will give red aggressive decks proactive game plans against life gain while also giving us damage as it enters, meaning it doesn't suffer from the dies-to-Doom-Blade issue.
The thing I love most about Sunspine Lynx is that it creates that Price-of-Progress problem that we've seen in Legacy where you'll be punished if you decide to play all non-basic lands. Sunspine Lynx will make you second guess the usefulness of "free" value lands.
This effect pushes back on double-faced lands, the cycle of neon dynasty channel lands, and anything in this category. I've long criticized making lands too good and too free, so it's good to have more pushback on that front with excellent designs like Sunspine Lynx.
Sunspine Lynx will see play if a mono-red aggressive deck is present in the meta. Despite being punished for playing non-basic lands, any two-color aggressive deck may want to play the card.
Hugs, Grisly Guardian
Everyone loves Hugs.
Hugs is an interesting card. It's comparable to a Hydroid Krasis in that it's more punishing the longer the game. Krasis stabilized better with lifegain and actual card draw, but this combination of colors isn't trying to stabilize. Generally, it's trying to close the game.
Gruul-based decks will be looking to close the door in the mid-to-late game and be built more proactively. This makes exiling the cards less punishing, since you'll want to play to the board rather than draw more reactive spells and hold them in your hand like the Sultai decks that Krasis helped enable.
I don't think Hugs is good enough on its own to see play everywhere or be specifically built around, but one of the major problems with aggressive Gruul was running out of gas. Decks like Gruul Adventures would use Edgewall Inkeeper and The Great Henge to keep cards flowing, but Hugs can do this on its own while being a reasonable four-mana play.
Hugs will see play if Gruul is a thing, but it will be difficult to splash, so you'll want to be committed to Gruul-proactive actions.
Kitsa, Otterball Elite
I have an affinity for Merfolk Looter, and this is easily my favorite card in a while. Kitsa will fit into basically any Prowess deck, which will likely be paired with red. Kitsa may be played in a Reanimator deck since it's a discard outlet that can do stuff like copy Thoughtsieze or a reanimation card, making it effectively uncounterable.
Remember that the prowess trigger will resolve before the spell, so you can always copy your second spell of the turn. If you want to copy your first spell, you can respond with another spell and let both prowess triggers resolve.
This will come up in spots where you lead with a spell, your opponent interacts, and you counter their spell allowing you a window to copy your original spell. On the other side, make sure you interact with the prowess trigger on the stack so that the opponent controlling Kitsa can't copy the second spell in their hand.
Kitsa seems like a nice fit into a deck like Phoenix, as it's a proactive threat that can discard the Phoenixes. However, it's not perfectly synergistic: you can't use it to discard an Arclight Phoenix and attack with both of them in the same turn. That's a big downside to the card in this archetype, but it's individually powerful enough that it may fit in despite that awkward interaction. Its standalone upside is too high.
This is an absolute slam-dunk card that will see play potentially in all formats because of its mana efficiency.
Ral, Crackling Wit
I don't follow Magic lore, but I'm loving Ral as an Otter.
Ral is a unique planeswalker that fits into the same decks as Kitsa—low-curve decks with lots of cantrips to fuel its loyalty and juice up the ultimate. It has the ability to protect itself by making an otter if you slam it on turn four, which will be especially effective on an empty battlefield.
Ral wants you to keep the battlefield clean regardless, so lots of one-mana removal will be mandatory. Ral has a real shot at seeing play in some form of UR Prowess deck and potentially a deck like Phoenix as an alternate win condition that's resilient to some interaction. I've played Chandra in Phoenix before, and while they function differently, this will be better on an empty board because it provides an individual prowess threat and allows us to draw more gas if needed.
This is a sweet card that doesn't have much mystery for how you should build with it, but it's strong enough to see play. I'll be excited to see some Otter Prowess decks popping up in Standard and beyond.
Season of Weaving
Season of Weaving is an interesting card I'd like to look at to highlight the new mechanic. I'm unsure if it has a name, so I'll refer to it as bear claw. (Maybe it's counting claws?)
Season of Weaving has a ton of modes that look awesome. You can draw five at a baseline. You can draw one and make two copies of artifacts/creatures if you're being proactive.
Season of Weaving is difficult to parse because it requires you to have permanents worth copying but not ones you want to pick up, and it can't prevent you from being swarmed by tokens.
This bear-claw mechanic is interesting and will likely be fun to play. However, I'm not sure Season of Weaving will see much play outside of Commander, as it's too expensive and a difficult card to set up.
Salvation Swan
Salvation Swan is a callback to Restoration Angel. Not much is different than the beloved Angel, but it provides a little value in leaving a flying counter behind. It doesn't instantly flicker the creature and instead brings it back in the end step. Salvation Swan also gives this Flickerwisp ability to all your birds, but I don't see that playing too much of a role because birds practically always have flying and you can't flicker creatures with flying. You likely want just a few birds in your deck with Salvation Swan to protect your creatures with flicker or to squeeze extra value out of the non-flyers.
I'm not that excited about a Resto Angel with less toughness in modern-day Magic. There's no doubt people will attempt to play this in some flash-style decks. It's nice to have threats to play at instant speed, but cards like Salvation Swan and Restoration Angel have likely been power-crept out of Magic at this point.
This is a cool twist on Resto Angel, but I'm not holding my breath that we'll see it in top-tier Standard or Pioneer decks.
That's it for this week. There are a lot of cards to cover, so I'll be back at it next week after the set drops. I've been a bit down about the power level of recent cards in Standard sets, but this set seems to be loaded with powerful cards. I'm excited to see the rest and dig deeper.
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