As one of the seemingly very few fans of Champions of Kamigawa, I am elated that we have finally returned all these years later for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. The unpopularity of the original block is the primary reason that we’ve been away for so long, and indeed the new set takes great strides to distance itself from its predecessor, but all the same I am pleased with the product. In fact, this may be my favorite second look at a plane we’ve ever had in all of Magic.
The execution of the “modernity versus tradition” theme in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is what puts the set over for me, and allows fans of the original block to share the excitement for this release with, well, everyone else. Focusing this theme on artifacts and enchantments and giving a ton of tools to support formats that care about either or both of these things gave the set a lot of tools to update existing archetypes, which is a huge improvement on stuff like Arcane, which generally didn’t land or play well even with other Standard-legal sets at the time. Some designs do get specific, but the set broadly offers many compelling tools for Cubes of all shapes and sizes.
Coming up with a Top 10 list for this set was interesting for me, as there are a lot of cards that I’m personally excited for, but my excitement is largely for fairly niche cards. I was expecting to have to whittle down a long list in light of this, but I actually hit pretty close to ten on my first pass without having to make many modifications. Before we get to that, though, let’s talk about some of those niche cards and the themes that Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty supports.
Artifacts
With a high volume of cheap artifact creatures, a good clip of “artifacts matter” cards, and reconfigure giving us a new spin on living weapon, my Artifact Twobert will be getting a massive overhaul with this set. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty delivers something that most artifact sets don’t: artifacts that are exciting and playable, yet not broken. Iron Apprentice is such a simple card and a most welcome addition to the Arcbound Worker family.
The set also features quite a few Vehicles, which is a card type that I really enjoy featuring in small quantities in my Cubes. Similar to the early trends with Equipment, Smuggler’s Copter stands out as a very pushed early design, and we’re seeing tamer and more interesting implementations being released now that the kinks have been worked out. Mindlink Mech looks awesome to me, and I’m excited to craft some Cubes with assorted creatures with hit triggers to crew it.
Enchantments
Enchantments get a lot less love in Cube than artifacts, but support for them has grown a lot in recent years. The printing of more cheap enchantment creatures does a lot to allow enchantment themes to seamlessly integrate into Cubes with other creature-focused archetypes, and the cheap enchantment matter creatures allow enchantment decks to be competitive with archetypes that have historically gotten more support.
Additionally, we see a continuation of perhaps my favorite cycle in Magic with more Shrines hitting the scene. I’m waffling on how I feel about Go-Shintai of Lost Wisdom, but some or all of these will be making their way into my Peasant Twobert. The more Shrines that exist, the more appealing it gets to feature Shrines only in specific colors or even to just play every Shrine in a Cube, and I’m here for all of it.
Modified
The artifact and enchantment themes also naturally blend to support the new notion of modified creatures. Auras, Equipment, and +1/+1 counters are the name of the game here, and these are all themes that I’ve enjoyed in various Cubes. There’s not a ton of great rates that care about modified creatures in the set, but I am at least excited to see if Thundering Raiju will make it into Carmen Handy’s Proliferate Cube.
Ninjas
A new spin on an old favorite. Ninjas were previously only supported in blue and black, and now we have a white Ninja and several green ones. I’m a huge fan of Ninjas in Cube as a way to push blue and black to get more involved in combat, and we recently dedicated an episode of The 540 to the tribe:
I would’ve loved to see a red Ninja or two, but alas. Maybe someday. I expect that Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty’s impact will be felt in Cube more with regard to these themes than individual cards, but there are absolutely some individual cards worth discussing. At least ten of them.
10. Boseiju, Who Endures
Boseiju, Who Endures has been the talk of preview season, though the conversation has been heavily skewed by people ready to believe anything that they’ve never seen before is liable to be completely broken. The strength of Boseiju comes more from the low opportunity cost to play the card than from the ceiling of the card’s power level. If you’re not interested in playing basic Forests, you’re likely not all that interested in this card either.
That said, there are plenty of Cube decks that end up playing a lot of basic Forests. The issue, then, is not as much justifying playing Boseiju in those decks, but rather featuring it in a Cube at all. At larger Cube sizes, I think that this isn’t that difficult an ask, especially given that Naturalize effects are one of green’s strengths, while maindecking these effects isn’t always the most desirable thing for players to do. Hiding this effect away in your manabase is kind of perfect. Again, the burden is more on getting the card in your Cube in the first place.
Honestly, Boseiju and this cycle in general would garner more enthusiasm from me if it wasn’t for the creature-land cycle from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms being what I consider to be a far more desirable spread of monocolor utility lands. Space for this sort of thing is limited, and while I would happily play Boseiju in all of my green Vintage Cube decks, I won’t be shocked if it doesn’t make the cut for the actual Cube.
9. Twinshot Sniper
Flametongue Kavu isn’t what it used to be, but this Shriekmaw / Fire Imp hybrid that can hit players and planeswalkers is appealing. This card would be a non-starter for me if it couldn’t hit players, but because it can, there’s a conversation to be had.
I’ve spoken now and again about my dislike for all the different Incinerate variants and Cubes that play a bunch of them. It’s just sort of a stale play experience, especially if Lightning Bolt exists alongside them in the spread. Bonecrusher Giant has been an awesome substitution for one of these cards, and while Magma Jet has fallen from grace in much the same way as Flametongue Kavu, I see Twinshot Sniper as another great card to sub in here. This is, of course, assuming that two damage actually trades with a lot of the cheap creatures in the environment.
Twinshot Sniper also gets bonus points for having good types for Cubes with delirium support. Being a potentially relevant silver bullet for Traverse the Ulvenwald yields additional bonus points.
8. Spring-Leaf Avenger
Only being able to recur permanent cards is a pretty big strike against Spring-Leaf Avenger, but the creature hits so hard that I’m willing to give it a serious look regardless. Green decks aren’t always the most combat-oriented, but it’s not difficult to imagine a base of Lotus Cobra, Eternal Witness, fetchlands, and Wasteland as a starting point to make Spring-Leaf Avenger work. It’s also intriguing that Courser of Kruphix, one of the most played green creatures in Cube, can often attack pretty freely if not all that effectively on its own.
My expectation is that Spring-Leaf Avenger falls a bit short of being appealing in Vintage Cube but can be incredible in any Cube that has an emphasis on combat. If there are creatures trading, then Spring-Leaf Avenger is a big deal. It’s also not totally out of the question for a 540-card Vintage Cube, though it’s not the biggest draw to green when a bunch of fast mana and Craterhoof Behemoth are available.
7. The Wandering Emperor
My personal belief is that this card is worse on rate than a fairly long list of four-mana white cards. Not all of them are relevant to every Cube with Armageddon being out of bounds for a lot of environments, but this card is also appreciably weaker than Gideon, Ally of Zendikar; Restoration Angel; and Hero of Bladehold.
Ryan Saxe was adamant that I wasn’t giving the card enough credit in our set review on The 540, and after sleeping on it, I will concede that it is better at offering specific support to flash-style decks than some of the cards that I would Cube over it and that I could conceive of the card being competitive on rate with Elspeth, Knight-Errant. I still maintain that Saxe’s perception of the card is a bit generous if mine is slightly harsh. The truth is likely somewhere in between.
The value that the card offers from use of its abilities abstractly is clearly not up to par with many planeswalkers, but the strength comes from the ability to cast it on the opponent’s turn as well as the ability to shake up combat on that turn. This has a lot of potential to be game-breaking, but is more reliant on combat being central to your Cube environment than anything. This is another general miss for Vintage Cube, but the more your Cube’s gameplay centers on combat, the more appealing The Wandering Emperor becomes.
6. Biting-Palm Ninja
Here’s another card that puts an emphasis on combat, but the difference that puts Biting-Palm Ninja over previous entries is that it has a very relevant ability when combat isn’t the name of the game. Three mana is a little steep for a Thoughtseize effect, but the 3/3 body isn’t messing around and if you’re using creatures like Baleful Strix to set up ninjutsu then there’s a lot of value to be had.
Three is a very reasonable cost to just cast Biting-Palm Ninja, though the card isn’t all that desirable in a Cube that can’t facilitate ninjutsu consistently. This effect can definitely play in a Vintage Cube, though it would have to be a slightly unconventional one with better support for black aggressive decks than we see in the current digital offerings.
The lower in power level a Cube gets, the more that 3/3 body matters, and just keeping the menace token is also of some value in these contexts. Biting-Palm Ninja doesn’t come at a broken rate, but it does come at a desirable one with a body and abilities that are easy to make effective use of.
I’m also a big fan of Nashi, Moon Sage’s Scion, though that card leans harder on combat mattering, some variance, and you having some life to play with. It’s also just considerably worse to hard-cast given its lack of evasion.
5. Kumano Faces Kakkazan
It’s pretty well established how I feel about red one-drops at this point. It’s always nice to have more options, and many Cubes could stand to feature more of them. Kumano Faces Kakkazan is appealing for a few reasons.
First, if you can get the counter from Chapter II, especially on a haste creature, then you’re getting the benefit of a creature and a pseudo-Aura from this card. If not, though, another thing that’s worth noting is that one-mana creatures have a way of being below-average topdecks. Specifically, if we’re talking about a card like Goblin Guide or Ghitu Lavarunner, it can be really difficult to make an attack in the late-game. Kumano Faces Kakkazan will at least give you one damage upstairs in these spots. Beyond that, the synergies with prowess threats and Dragon’s Rage Channeler are huge boons for me.
Lastly, we have the obvious fact that the 2/2 haste body on Etching of Kumano is well above rate for a one-mana red creature. You’re not getting that right away, so the card is much worse than a creature with those stats, but there’s a lot of room to be worse than that while still being actively good in red aggressive decks.
4. Rabbit Battery
Another great red one-drop! I’m only moderately confident that Rabbit Battery is more powerful than Kumano Faces Kakkazan, but I’m much more confident that both blow Reinforced Ronin out of the water. This is not to say that Reinforced Ronin is a bad card, but recasting it every turn you want to attack and being completely unable to block are both real costs. Cycling for two mana is also a considerable cost in the year 2022.
Rabbit Battery, however, is a massively upgraded Raging Goblin. The emphasis here is not on the comparison to Raging Goblin, but on the massive improvement. An Equipment that costs one mana and equips to give +1/+1 and haste is already something to consider for a Cube where many of the creatures don’t already have haste. Freerolling a 1/1 body on that effect turns this into a card that’s just good to play in any aggressive deck.
The play pattern that really excites me about the card involves keeping Rabbit Battery equipped as often as possible. That way, if the opponent presents a sweeper, your Rabbit Battery will simply fall off instead of dying, you’ll at least have that body, and you’ll also have the ability to haste up whatever leftover creature you present from there. This is arguably the most significant strength of reconfigure as a mechanic.
3. Blade of the Oni
There are so many black aggressive cards that I would love if they were only easier to cast. Do you know how much I want to like Vorpal Sword? Blade of the Oni makes liking it easy, with a solid body, evasion, easy casting cost, and much to my surprise no blocking restriction. It’s upside all the way, and the reconfigure ability only adds more.
Outside of a heavy tribal slant or some other design parameter disqualification, I can’t see a reason why a Cube with support for black aggressive decks wouldn’t want this card. I’m going to need multiple copies for my personal collection, and Blade of the Oni makes me excited about the future of black aggressive decks. I’m still hoping for more one-mana creatures on this front, but this is a very pushed two-mana threat.
2. Kaito Shizuki
This is one of the coolest cards in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and isn’t lacking in the power level department either. Kaito does compare unfavorably to Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver in the highest-power-level Cubes, but the play experience isn’t miserable like that of Ashiok, which is a huge plus for my money.
Kaito’s abilities aren’t all that powerful if you aren’t able to attack with some creatures, but the phasing ability will generally give you at least one shot at setting that up without help from other cards. Even if I don’t have high praise for the abilities otherwise, Kaito does still give you more than enough to justify playing a three-mana planeswalker.
I’m personally most excited about using Kaito to facilitate aggressive Dimir decks in conjunction with other Ninjas, but the looting ability allows the card to seamlessly fit the bill for Reanimator decks as well. When you consider fun and engaging play patterns as well as power level, Kaito is my second-favorite Dimir card for Cube all-time after Baleful Strix.
1. Lion Sash
Take everything that I like about reconfigure and apply it to a cheap white creature that offers some hate to opposing plans without potentially stifling your own, and you get Lion Sash. While not strictly an upgrade over Scavenging Ooze, the card is in my estimation more powerful and a bigger deal in white than green to boot.
Especially in Cubes with fetchlands, permanents hit the graveyard early and often. When that’s the case, the Sash gets thick quick. I think the card is a little much for a graveyard-centric Cube, but it has the raw power to hang in Vintage Cubes, and being a creature that takes some mana to set up makes it appropriate for a wide range of lower-powered Cubes as well. Just an incredible design all around.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty sets the bar high for Magic in 2022. While my excitement for the set is largely centered around some of the more niche elements, there’s a lot of power here otherwise and a little something for everyone in the file. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year has to offer.
