Amonkhet Complete Review: Blue

Amonkhet is finally legal, and since apparently we are actually living in a timeline where Felidar Guardian is banned, I kind of had to blow up a lot of what I had been working on last week and start over. Of course, that means there’s a lot of work to do, figuring out what this new world looks like, but also a lot of opportunity. Today, I’d like to start by focusing on the blue cards of Amonkhet. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s start with what is arguably the most important card in the set:

You just can’t list the blue cards in alphabetical order without starting with Ancient Crab. At least not correctly.

Ancient Crab has nothing but stats going for it, and it is several stat points short of being worth considering, to say nothing of an inefficient distribution of what stats it has.

While this is a very attractive blend of Aethersnipe and Air Elemental for Draft purposes, the bar is just super-high for six-drops in Constructed. Pass.

As Foretold has primarily been discussed a Modern card because of its ability to immediately cast busted cards without casting costs, such as Restore Balance, Ancestral Visions, and Evermind.

However, is there a way to capitalize on As Foretold in Standard?

There are two important parts of As Foretold to remember:

• Once each turn…
• Cost X or less…

As Foretold is slow to get going, but once it starts rolling, you can get paid on both turns if you have stuff to spend the “mana” on. Unlike Aether Vial or Brain in a Jar, As Foretold plays spells that cost X or less. This reduces a lot of potential awkwardness.

How long does it take to get your money’s worth with As Foretold?

Turn 3: Spend three, get nothing.

Turn 4: Now we get +2 mana, assuming we’ve got two one-cost spells (one of which is an instant).

Turn 5: Now we get as much as +4 mana, which is already very impressive. However, it does require us having two two-cost cards to play. It’s also important to note that if we just end up with untapped lands we never use, it’s not actually “netting” us mana the same way.

Turn 6: By the time we get to this point, we’re absolutely miles ahead of our opponent in mana development (with colored mana basically no issue, either). That’s kind of a long time, but it’s not out of the question. There is also the option of using As Foretold as a sideboard card for slower matchups where gaining a mana advantage can be game-winning.

How many ones and twos are we supposed to play to really get our money’s worth out of As Foretold? After all, there’s a good chance we already played one of each already, and now we want two more of each in our hand, right?

One of the challenges, though, is that filling up our deck with ones and twos quickly makes it so that we don’t actually get threes or fours out of As Foretold on the following turns. Maybe we’re supposed to be willing to miss on some ones to help ensure more threes and fours?

One of the problems with trying to capitalize on a mana engine as ambitious as As Foretold is that you run out of cards in your hand quickly. After all, if you’re casting a card with it on each player’s turn, plus using your mana, that’s three cards a turn.

Duskwatch Recruiter, Tireless Tracker, Vizier of the Menagerie, and Lifecrafter’s Bestiary are all high-volume card draw engines. They are all typically bound by how much mana you have, and every mana you spend playing your cards is another mana you’re not spending drawing more.

With As Foretold in the mix, you can actually spend most of your mana drawing extra cards, relying on As Foretold to let you keep playing them all. Notably, Vizier of the Menagerie does work with As Foretold, so you can play a creature off the top of your deck for zero if you’ve got enough time counters.

Vizier of the Menagerie is just a sweet card anyway. It’s not like a 3/4 for four is that small of a body, and whenever you cast creatures from the top of your deck, you’re not actually paying any extra mana the way you do with Duskwatch Recruiter, Tireless Tracker, and Lifecrafter’s Bestiary. Nevertheless, mana is still one of the two limiting factors, and As Foretold does wonders to help there.

The other constraint is whenever the top card of your deck isn’t a creature. However, Duskwatch Recruiter, planeswalkers, Clues, cycling, and shuffling from cards like Evolving Wilds can all reset the top of our library, giving us a fresh look.

I’m not sure we can really afford to take our third turn off without impacting the battlefield, but if we can get away with it, we’re going to start snowballing very hard. Slowly at first, but hard.

Manglehorn’s stock has potentially dropped with the banning of Felidar Guardian. However, it’s still a potentially maindeckable or sideboardable card with applications against Mardu, Metalwork Colossus, Dynavolt Tower, Walking Ballista, even Torrential Gearhulk. It also synergizes with Duskwatch Recruiter, Traverse the Ulvenwald, and various Lilianas in ways other artifact kill doesn’t.

Nissa is definitely a controversial card, as some players seem to feel she is the second coming. I think she looks decent, but I guess I just don’t see yet why she would be so outrageously strong unless you really value the ultimate.

No ability to protect herself is a serious downside, and it’s not like she has all that much loyalty early on. You can’t be sure you’re getting a card out of her like you can with Liliana, the Last Hope, either. Getting to scry 2 with her is definitely nice, and if she lives a little bit, it’s not hard to get to a spot where you’re effectively drawing an extra card every other turn, not to mention saving a little bit of mana.

In order to really get your money’s worth, though, I think you have to factor in her late-game ultimate equity. Spending eight mana to potentially Fireball someone for ten is a really big game. Even if you only spend five, you’re only talking about having to plus her twice before threatening ten damage in the air (and Nissa living).

Better than Snapping Drake? Yes.

However, we’re going to have to do a lot better than that in Constructed.

• Void Shatter
• Disallow
• Scatter to the Winds
• Broken Concentration

As a guy that has registered 4x Cancel in a Standard Pro Tour, I think it is safe to say that we’re not at risk of Cancel being good enough anytime soon.

Cartouche of Knowledge is a little unassuming, but a quick look at some other Auras granting flying paint an optimistic picture.

Compared to Spectral Flight, Cartouche of Knowledge trades +1/+1 worth of stats for an extra card, plus the ability to bounce all Trials. Compared to Gryff’s Boon, we’re paying an extra mana for +0/+1 and the card right now, instead of an option to rebuy a card later for four mana (and of course, Trial-bouncing equity).

The blue Trial isn’t the most exciting card in the world, particularly with Felidar Guardian banned (which would have been an awesome combo with it). However, Trial of Knowledge is still a Sift with the added benefit of sitting on the battlefield, waiting to combo with Cartouche of Knowledge (which Trial of Knowledge helps find).

At first, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to reconcile the extreme contrasts of styles of decks that employed Spectral Flight and Sift. What deck would possibly want both?!

The most appealing Trial, to me, is Trial of Ambition. Two mana for an Edict is already reasonably attractive, and if you ever get to run the rebuys, you are really doing it. As an experiment, I tried seeing what I could do with it alongside Cartouche of Knowledge and Trial of Knowledge.

In thinking about what kinds of U/B decks have made good use of Sift in the past, I kept coming back to Solar Flare, a kind of Reanimator/Control hybrid Luis Scott-Vargas and Paul Cheon crushed the American Magic scene with a little over a decade ago (originally unveiled over in Japan slightly earlier).

Liliana, Death’s Majesty is one of the best “reanimation spells” in years, so we’re off to a promising start. Unfortunately, most of the best fatties have when-cast triggers rather than enters-the-battlefield triggers at the moment. Nevertheless, I set about trying to find a blend of fatties, discard outlets, reanimation spells, Cartouches, Trials, cheap interaction, creatures worthy of casting Cartouche of Knowledge on, and so on.

I struggled and struggled, wrestling with how to pull it all together, but was having little success. After all, you need a fair number of cheap creatures to cast Cartouche of Knowledge on one reliably, right?

Maybe this one is taking the “plan to Cartouche our opponent’s creatures” thing too far, but we can also just Cartouche our Zombie tokens. The thing I kept coming back to is that, when you Cartouche of Knowledge and bounce one of each Trial, you are getting a two-mana draw-three (and with incredible selection, as your draw-three includes an Edict and more card draw). You really don’t have to do much of that to take over the game.

[The Cartouche has to target your own creatures. Decklist left in for inspiration/historical purposes. –Ed.]

I can imagine very easily the best one-cost cycling creature of each color with one getting played more than people expect. Winged Shepherd, Horror of the Broken Lands, Desert Cerodon, and Curator of Mysteries all have low opportunity costs, and if you are in the market for getting a creature into your graveyard to reanimate, power up delirium, exile to Scrapheap Scrounger, whatever, they are very efficient ways to do these things.

Curator of Mysteries is the best of the bunch, at least in terms of being cast straight-up. Horror of the Broken Lands, amusingly enough, might actually be the best-positioned. We’ll see. It’s important to note that even discarding to cards like Trial of Knowledge trigger the Curator. Even more importantly, they trigger Archfiend of Ifnir.

I’ve written about Archfiend of Ifnir a bit over the past few weeks, but suffice to say, I think it’s great. You don’t have to be super dedicated to get your money’s worth. And while cycling for two is a lot more than cycling for one, it’s still not a big ask.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the banning of Felidar Guardian is Ishkanah, Grafwidow. Archfiend of Ifnir is actually a pretty fantastic answer to Ishkanah, all things considered.

Cartouche of Zeal and Trial of Zeal form one of the more attractive Cartouche/Zeal duos, though it might not be the most natural to fit with Cartouche of Knowledge and Trial of Knowledge. The red ones really do want you to be very aggressive, making them seem like nice fits with the black and white ones. Nevertheless, here’s an attempt:

The Cartouches and Trials provide a lot of Prowess triggers on the way in, and resetting them, combined with the extra cards, makes for lots of extra triggers.

This list doesn’t make nearly as good of use of Crush of Tentacles as some other lists will, but it is interesting to note just how well Crush of Tentacles works with the Cartouches and Trials. Not only do you get the rebuys on each, you get to rebuy each Trial for each Cartouche you’re bouncing. As if that wasn’t enough, if you have seven mana, you can even give your Octopus +1/+1 and haste!

I’ll be back with more work on Cartouches and Trials, as I really do think there might be something there. It has, thus far, proven a tough nut to crack, however.

There’s is a deceptively great amount of depth to Censor, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s on the shortlist for most likely to be both under- and overrated by people. Cards that have so much of their power tied up in low opportunity cost can be very challenging for people to figure out. It took years before most people understood what was really going on with Brainstorm, Ponder, Gitaxian Probe, and the list goes on and on.

While I am more exciting about Censor in control, I want to start by getting a dedicated cycling deck out of the way.

The more I play with the new cycling cards, the more it feels like you either need to play sweepers or play more creatures. Sweepers would let you regain a lot of the tempo you lose from cycling so much. However, Ruthless Sniper is actually pretty decent, even if killed. Playing it and the Shadowstorm Vizier also makes Curator of Mysteries and Archfiend of Ifnir a lot more castable (as our opponents aren’t just sitting around with a fist full of removal).

I haven’t been impressed so far, but it seems like it’s likely a matter of finding the right way to defend ourselves against the field. One thing that’s for certain, it’s a lot harder to max out on Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted than it was to max on Lightning Rift and Astral Slide. The activation costs add up extremely quickly, as we also want to be spending our mana on cycling.

I want to like Hieroglyphic Illumination, but it isn’t actually nearly as situationally useful as some cycling cards. If we’re planning to cast it, it isn’t nearly as good as Glimmer of Genius. No way I’m ruling it out, as the opportunity cost is just so low. However, I’m not exactly “in like” yet, let alone love.

I want to switch over to the Censor decks I’m more excited about, but first, here’s a Faith of the Devoted deck going in a little better of a direction. We discussed black last week, but that was with Felidar Guardian legal. One bigger winner from the ban is any sort of tapout midrange strategy, any sort of battlefield control strategy. W/B Cycling is one such deck:

Okay, this is supposed to be a look at blue, though, so let’s get into the good stuff: Blue Control.

Censor provides early-game protection that can be easily replaced later. It does have diminishing returns, both because of how much harder it is to get the second one to “work” and because of how much your opponent can play around them all more easily if they know you have a bunch. Still, we want a critical mass of good turn 2 plays, both on the play and on the draw, and Censor is great under such circumstances.

Glorybringer may come as a surprise to most folks, but I think the card is just absolutely fantastic, one of the best cards in the set.

It’s extremely powerful in its own right, but it is also well-positioned against Gideon, Ally of Zendikar; Grim Flayer; Tireless Tracker; Fatal Push; and more. Generally speaking, it really helps shore up a weakness to planeswalkers, and along with Censor and Commit//Memory, U/R is now actually totally fine against planeswalkers and planeswalker-based strategies.

Commit//Memory is kind of a weirdo and an ambitious design, but I think it may actually bring with it an incredible amount of good gameplay and fun. To start with, Commit is so good, I would play it on its own. It’s kind of a Cast Out, kind of a Counterspell. Yes, in theory, the card could come back, but by then, hopefully you’ll have another answer. Besides, there are lots of great times to stick someone, like in response to their Traverse the Ulvenwald or Evolving Wilds.

As for Memory? It’s kind of funny, but it seems like we’ve had so many Timetwisters disappoint people that most people seem to just assume Timetwister isn’t good. Memory isn’t just any old Timetwister, however. Since we’d play the top half anyway, it’s got a super-low opportunity cost. Additionally, the whole drawback of them getting to use the cards first is offset by waiting until you have lots of mana to cast it or casting it on your opponent’s end step with Torrential Gearhulk.

Yes, it really works that way. Which is dumb.

I dream of a day where Magic isn’t balanced around this kind of stuff. I’m not saying it’s busted. I’m saying that, if it isn’t, there are other serious flaws in the design. This card is just so obnoxious for anyone trying to play anything remotely midrange-like. You can’t just point to Torrential Gearhulk and say, “See, it doesn’t work perfectly with the most popular finisher. That tension makes it okay.”

Well, you can, but it’d be kind of disingenuous.

Besides, it’s like Torrential Gearhulk is “okay.” Believe me, I am 100% on the page about making some great cards. What I have an issue with is making the best blue card a finisher that makes obsolete diversity of big plays. It pushes you to play tons of instants instead of more creatures or planeswalkers. It’s not a particularly novel experience. Whatever.

Anyway, Pull from Tomorrow is really efficient, and if you’re in the market for to completely refill your hand at instant speed, it’s the card for the job.

Any card with cycling for one mana is worth a second look, and while Compelling Argument isn’t the most attractive option ever, maybe we can put it to use in a deck that values it being a sorcery (as opposed to all the cycling creatures).

This list aspires to leverage one-cost cycling sorceries and instants as well as one-cost cantrips to quickly put enough into our graveyard to make Engima Drake and Cryptic Serpent substantially above rate.

Both Enigma Drake and Cryptic Serpent can really appreciate being Expedited, and both line up right with Sweltering Suns. While Enigma Drake is easier, Cryptic Serpent is especially interesting to me because of its high casting cost. I can’t help but wonder if we can combine it with Elder Deep-Fiend to revitalize U/R or Temur Emerge.

I don’t know. This is probably trying too hard, and we should probably just pick a direction, either Drowner of Hope into Ulamog or more creatures instead of sorceries and instants, focusing on traditional emerge. For instance, the U/R Emerge list Kevin Jones piloted this weekend:

Kevin’s list capitalizes on Bloodlust Brawler as an aggressive discard outlet that allows him to remove Key to the City and play without any targets for artifact kill. Of course, I’m not sure I could actually get away from Scrapheap Scrounger in a deck like this anyway.

Reduce//Rubble does a passable Spell Shrivel impression, but where it really shines is when used in conjunction with Elder Deep-Fiends to just completely lock opponents out of the game. Even if you think you’ll never have time for such a mediocre Counterspell, you can discard it to Cathartic Reunion or whatever and still have a partial Time Walk in the bank. Don’t sleep on this one.

Now here’s a card you’d think would have cycling. Without it, it’s relegated to the Draft table. It’s just too expensive for how narrow of applications it has in Constructed.

Essence Scatter is a little upgrade to Horribly Awry, and while it’s awkward against Heart of Kiran and planeswalkers, it has several very important jobs.

• Torrential Gearhulk
• Ishkanah, Grafwidow
• Glorybringer

First, just to get it out of my system, here’s a Draw-Go deck that capitalizes on the recent surge of two-cost Counterspells and how well Baral, Chief of Compliance works with them.

Torrential Gearhulk recursion really is pretty sick with Engulf the Shore. Still, it would be kind of surprising if it wasn’t worth playing an actual second color (the version above plays eight white sources to show how easy it would be to sideboard white, while still keeping Engulf at full power).

Essence Scatter might be especially important to U/W, as U/B and U/R have such good one and two-cost removal options. Full disclosure: I typically consider a deck with three Torrential Gearhulks to not be done cooking yet. If you don’t have all four, you aren’t trying hard enough.

Believe me, I know how badly the true control players would love for Failure//Comply to be good. It’s what they want in their gut, what they want at an instinctual level. It appeals to their most base, animalistic desires. They can feel that the card shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly, as most have.

And they’re right.

I think most people are quick to dismiss the card because of how poor it is as a straightforward control card. It really is just an inefficient way to slow your opponent down. However, where the card might really shine is when you exploit it as an Aftermath card. You see, if you’re flipping your deck somehow (whether just a bunch from self-mill, or literally your entire deck with some combo), Failure//Comply is an ultra-low-cost way to force your kill through. In some ways, it reminds me of Cabal Therapy in its ability to ensure that flipping your deck with translate into a win, not just your kill card getting countered.

What deck? What format?

It’s not about that. It’s a tool to have in our toolkit, to know we have access to when the right deck comes along.

Cycling of two is so much more than cycling for a single blue, so we’ve got to be pretty into casting whatever the card is. In this case, a sorcery six-cost bounce spell isn’t even close to appealing, even if it hits two targets.

Repulse would be amazing, but only being able to hit tapped creatures is just not the same thing: for instance, against Heart of Kiran. It’s not completely out of the question, but it’s probably not right.

Both the spell shield and the Embalm abilities are appealing for grinding, but I suspect the format is much too fast for such modest advantages from your five-drop. Just compare to Archangel Avacyn or Verdurous Gearhulk.

Hekma Sentinels is probably just a Draft card, but it does have two things going for it.

1. It’s a zero-mana way to leverage New Perspectives into a kill (along with Flameblade Adept, Shadowstorm Vizier, and Horror of the Broken Lands).

2. If you play with lots of this kind of stuff, dump your hand, and Shadow of the Grave everything back, you get a little bit of a multiplier.

Unfortunately, as a kill card for New Perspectives, it costs more than Flameblade Adept and Shadowstorm Vizier, plus it doesn’t have evasion. While Horror of the Broken Lands does cost more, at least it has cycling, contributing to the overall engine.

As for the second, we just run out of room trying to fit such a weaker version into our deck. For instance:

Is it really worth playing Hekma Sentinels here? Probably not, and that’s to say nothing of how much weaker Shadow of the Grave is without Noose Constrictor.

Draft, at best. We just can’t afford to play a three-cost removal spell that doesn’t actually completely solve the problem (particularly when it’s sorcery-speed, gives them a chump blocker, doesn’t stop activated abilities, and can get beaten by enchantment removal and bounce). We’d have to be really into it being an Aura.

Kefnet the Mindful may have a couple of superficial similarities to Thassa, God of the Sea, but the card plays nothing like her. The easiest place to potentially slot Kefnet is in some kind of a control deck as a reliable end-game card advantage engine and back-up road to victory, a sort of indestructible planeswalker. For instance:

As a Treasure Trove, Kefnet is actually not too bad. You don’t need to bounce the land, so it’s actually pretty reasonable as a way to punish people who don’t want to play into your Torrential Gearhulk mana. By the time you actually want to get around to ending the game, having a full grip isn’t likely to be your biggest problem.

As for the land-bouncing, it does a couple of cool things here. The most important of these is blinking your Wandering Fumaroles. Again, it’s a slow, long-range plan, but it is great for ensuring that you’ll eventually be able to grind your opponent out, no matter how much removal they have.

Other interesting targets in the format:

• Aether Hub
• Sunscorched Desert
• Cycling Duals
• Skyline Cascade
• Mortuary Mire
• Fertile Thicket
• Anything, when you have landfall cards you want to trigger.
• Anything, when you just want to get up to seven cards to be able to attack a planeswalker at a key moment.

It’s also worth noting that if you ever cast Memory, one of the consequences of refilling your hand is the ability to attack (even if you had no cards in your hand the previous turn).

Another niche interaction to keep in mind is that Kefnet counts as a creature, so if you’re milling yourself with cards like Liliana, Death’s Majesty, you can potentially cheat it onto the battlefield with reanimation cards, also like Liliana, Death’s Majesty. Late-game, this could be a valuable option to have access to. Mortuary Mire isn’t nearly as potent, but it’s another possible way to access a Kefnet you mill, which has the added benefit of being an interesting land to bounce with Kefnet once you actually get it back.

It is kind of interesting that you can actually play your Mortuary Mire early in the game, whenever you need. Then, when the game is going long, you can drop Kefnet and bounce the Mortuary Mire, so that even if they Cast Out your Kefnet, you can Mire a Gearhulk and keep rolling.

Control decks without real sweepers are somewhat suspicious to me at the moment, however. I would hate to play against Ishkanah, Grafwidow with this deck.

Labyrinth Guardian is an intriguing beatdown creature that looks like it has a drawback in exchange for the rebuy later. The clever part is that the “drawback” is actually upside in a lot of scenarios.

The problem, however, is that we’re trying awfully hard to force blue into what could just be a mono-red aggro deck.

Of course, once we start down this path, it opens up all kinds of questions, like “What are we going to do about our gap at converted mana cost two?” There are lots of good questions about Scrapheap Scrounger, Unlicensed Disintegration, Fiery Temper, and more. However, since today’s focus is on blue…

While it’s not clear if you want Labyrinth Guardian at all, it’s interesting to note that you can mostly have eight if you want. If we end up playing a lot of looting effects, it’s interesting just how many of these creatures we could play to get value.

Of course, that begs the question: why pay four to Embalm Tah-Crop Skirmsher when you could pay four to Embalm Honored Hydra?

Good question.

If there’s a Tah-Crop Skirmisher deck, I could imagine Slither Blade being a part of it. After all, a 1/1 unblockable creature has been good enough before, and Slither Blade is “strictly better,” so we are talking about a card with potential. That said, I’m just not seeing the Bident of Thassa or Thassa, God of the Sea that lets us justify all these mediocre blue creatures.

If it weren’t for how much pressure Mardu puts on the format to play one-and two-cost removal, Sixth Sense would be kind of cute to put on Slither Blade. For instance:

The dream of turn 1 Slither Blade, turn 2 Sixth Sense, protect with Blossoming Defense or Dispel is very sexy. While Blossoming Defense is a much better card that Dispel, Botanical Sanctum is the only land that lets us actually pull off the dream that way. Dispel, on the other hand, works with most normal draws.

Commit//Memory gives U/G a much better removal spell than they usually have access to. It’s also interesting that, if you play enough tempo cards, Timetwister starts looking better and better…

Cards that cost two to cycle generally have to be planned on being cast reasonably often. Otherwise, you could just get a cycling card for half the cost. Lay Claim is so outrageously expensive, it probably scares most deckbuilders off. The saving grace, however, is that because it steals permanents and not just creatures, it might actually be a dark-horse answers to planeswalkers about to go ultimate. It’s ambitious, but I actually think Lay Claim has decent chances.

It’s an extremely niche synergy, but Open the Armory can find Lay Claim as part of some weird toolbox. I guess you could also care about having a high average converted mana count, maybe because of cards like Sorin, Grim Nemesis or Combustible Gearhulk. The thing is, even if you go to extreme lengths like this next list, it only raises your average converted mana cost up to 2.83.

I guess Lay Claim could also be a way of potentially increasing your enchantment count enough to support Benefaction of Rhonas if you were okay with spending three to draw two cards, one of which requires you to wait two more mana to get to something you can cast most of the time. Realistically, there are probably too many better options for it to ever come to that, such as Cast Out. For instance:

A good time, to be sure, but at this rate, there’s nothing to work with outside of Draft, at least with the current card pool.

New Perspectives is sort of a “draw-four” where the fourth card is a zero-cost Fluctuator. While it may also be possible to play it in some controlling Drake Haven / Faith of the Devoted deck, the most exciting aspect of the card is in some kind of a Shadow of the Grave combo deck. Once you have New Perspectives going, you might easily draw ten cards before you have to stop. Then, if you Shadow of the Grave, you’ll probably be able to draw your whole deck. At that point, there are a few possible kills, the most efficient that I know of being Noose Constrictor into Fling.

The bottleneck here is mana, which makes Vizier of Tumbling Sands and Shefet Monitor crucial.

Once you get New Perspectives going, each nets you a mana (or two, if you happen to have a Weirding Wood or Gift of Paradise).

For some reason, I keep coming back to Open into Wonder, wanting to make it work. I think it’s the challenge of reconciling a Braingeyser with an area-of-effect unblockable spell that implies you want the game to keep going at least one more turn.

I don’t think there’s enough yet, but here are some positive interactions to keep in mind as more cards become available:

• Scourge Wolf, Solemn Recruit, and double strike in general, as you do get to draw two cards per creature.
• Combat Celebrant loves to be unblockable, and it lets all your other creatures attack again, getting you lots of extra cards and extra mileage out of making them unblockable.
• When you have lots of tokens, you have the easiest time getting at least a Braingeyser out of Open into Wonder.

The dream would be if they printed a sorcery for 1WR that put two 1/1 double-striking tokens onto the battlefield. Then Open into Wonder is already four extra cards and damage. I would be surprised if they made something like that at such an aggressive rate, but stranger things have happened.

We can do a lot better than a four-mana sorcery-speed draw-two. Glimmer of Genius is the gold standard, an instant with scry 2 that gains two energy. Yes, there is some selection, but we’re also bound not only by cards with cycling but also those we’ve already drawn this game. One of the more common targets also being a four-mana draw-two doesn’t help the case.

Well, the good news is that people will be gunning for Saheeli Rai a lot less, which might be the best combo with Scribe of the Mindful. The bad news is that Scribe of the Mindful is a long way from Felidar Guardian. Scribe of the Mindful might still be an interesting combo card, particularly if you’re putting a lot of your deck into your graveyard and have a way to reanimate it with haste (like Corpse Dance or Shallow Grave). I don’t see it yet, however.

This is a tough way to do it, as most of the best madness incentives reward you for playing lots of creatures. If Seeker of Insight is good enough, it’s probably because a 1/3 is actually not that far away to start with and we’ve got a deck that cares about the body while also having a few synergies, yet doesn’t fall apart if the Seeker is killed.

Every time I try to build that deck, it just turns into R/G Madness, and I cut the Seekers.

Maybe there’s a place for it in one of those U/R Fevered Visions decks?

Cycling of two is probably enough to knock this one out of Constructed, as there are just too many better options.

I think Vizier of Many Faces is actually pretty decent. Just play it straight-up in a midrange deck with some good targets like Ishkanah, Glorybringer, Torrential Gearhulk, Goblin Dark-Dwellers, whatever, and you’re already doing all right. A Clone for four is a little behind, but not that much; however, once you rebuy it, you’re really rocking. Meanwhile, every time you flip one to a Grapple with the Past, Vessel of Nascency, or Liliana, Death’s Majesty, you’re getting value.

If you want to get fancy, you can potentially combine it with Anointed Procession or Second Harvest to capitalize on the face that it’s a token when you Embalm it. Saheeli Rai, Mirrorpool, and Saheeli’s Artistry also make token copies of things that can be especially nice for doubling.

Disperse has shown up before, and this new take on it has a few additional positive interactions.

While generally milling an opponent for two isn’t good, milling ourselves for two and being able to plan for it makes it generally upside. The printing of Commit//Memory also changes the value of being able to mill on occasion.

A Draft card that’s miles from doing anything notable for Constructed.

Not completely out of the question, as giving all your tokens flying is actually a pretty big game. Nevertheless, the baseline 2/3 flier is just not overly enticing, given how much competition there is at the four spot. Besides, it sucks to get completely blown out in combat when a Harnessed Lightning makes all your creatures lose flying.

Bounty of Luxa looks like a lot of fun. Sadly, it’s kind of a planeswalker without haste or many options. Still, it has two big things going for it.

• It’s harder to kill than planeswalkers, and may even get around cards like Dissenter’s Deliverance that can kill artifacts like Dynavolt Tower.
• It produces lots of raw power. If you’ve got plenty of ways to take advantage of the Black Lotus turns, you are kind of getting better than a four-cost planeswalker would normally give you.

While I’d like to live in the world where we can just run Bounty of the Luxa maindeck, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s proves to be a sideboard card at best, specifically for matchups where you want a resilient card draw engine and can leverage the big mana turns to make your moves.

Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun is definitely another odd duck. When used with tokens, it’s actually a pretty efficient way to make your tokens unblockable “with haste.” Even when you’re just beating down with it, it’s a 2/2 for two that Embalms into a 3/3 unblockable creature with haste.

Given that it’s U/W, I started with just a two-color deck:

However, the go-wide style of tokens isn’t actually maximizing Temmet’s ability. Maybe that’s fine, but it is interesting to consider just how much better-suited he is for work with cards like Honored Hydra.

Weaver of Currents has two basic applications:

• Ramping out medium to big threats like Reality Smasher and Drowner of Hope (notably, helping cast colorless cards that would otherwise be challenging to cast these days).
• Being a great thing to untap with cards like Paradox Engine.

This next list aspires to do the second but is still too rough to really come together yet. Still, I just wanted to highlight a few of the options we might want to look at.

There’s so much of this stuff, the slow, big snowball of card advantage. The real questions are probably “How much time do we really have?” and “How big do we actually have to go to win?”

Spring//Mind would be a lot of fun, but I fear there may be too much competition at the three spot. In some ways, it’s like a Cultivate, but instead of a land in your hand, you effectively get a six-mana draw-two.

That’s not a great deal.

I considered pairing it with Goblin Dark-Dwellers, since we can “cheat” the six-cost of Mind.

The problem is, we’re still losing it out of the graveyard, so we really are getting just a Divination out of it, and lots of stuff is comparable to a Divination when Goblin Dark-Dwellers flashes it back.

We can do much better. Flaying Tendrils and Yahenni’s Expertise both seem generally better, and Fumigate, Descend upon the Sinful, Engulf the Shore, Sweltering Suns, and Kozilek’s Return make it confusing if we’re even in the market for a black sweeper to begin with.

Okay, that was a lot for one day, but there’s a lot to figure out now that Felidar Guardian is gone. The opening weekend’s SCG Tour stop was dominated by various fast aggro decks like Mardu and G/B, but that was to be expected after one of the pillars of the format was surprise-banned two days before the event. It’s going to take a little work to figure out where we go from here, but I’ve got a feeling Torrential Gearhulk; Glorybringer; Ishkanah, Grafwidow; and several planeswalkers will be on the front lines.