Every set comes with cards that are funky, and Ixalan is no
exception. These are the kinds of rares that are most often misevaluated at
the beginning of the set because it’s hard to lean on evaluations of
previous cards. More often than not, they are very bad in Limited, but
occasionally one will slip through that is completely busted!
Let’s take a look at some funky rares from Ixalan!
One mana for a 3/3? It should be great, right? Nope. The downside is way
worse than it looks. I wouldn’t be surprised if Old-Growth Dryads is
unplayable. The reason for this has to do with when the card should be
good.
After about turn 5, a vanilla 3/3 doesn’t impact the battlefield as much as
it does on the early turns. That should make Old-Growth Dryads even better
because you can cast it on turn 1, but the problem has to do with the value
of lands at different stages of the game.
For the beginning couple of turns of any game of Magic, lands have
extremely high value, and near the end of a game, excess mana has
little-to-no value. Giving an opponent a free Rampant Growth on turns 1
through 4 of any game of Limited is extremely worrisome, as it enables them
to play above curve and double spell at a higher rate than normal.
Even though Old-Growth Dryads is above curve, it’s letting your opponent
play multiple cards above curve. And the body eventually doesn’t
impact the game as much. In fact, the additional land gifted to your
opponent expedites the time in which the 3/3 body becomes outclassed. So
playing Old-Growth Dryads early is a bad idea, and when the downside
doesn’t matter as much, the 3/3 body isn’t good enough. Hence the card
isn’t very good.
I’m going to start by putting it in my decks, because maybe double-spelling
on turn 5 by playing this and a four-drop ends up being good, but I’m very
skeptical on the card, as the ceiling isn’t very high and the floor is
quite low.
Three mana for an 0/1 is absolutely terrible. Luckily, there’s more to
Tilonalli’s Skinshifter than the body.
Essentially this card is going to range from absolutely terrible to
completely insane. If you’re even slightly ahead as far as combat is
concerned, this card should push you close to the finish line. Haste
creatures can really surprise your opponent, and when it’s a copy of your
best attacker, you better’d bet that it can do some real damage.
Curving a two-drop into this creature is going to be hard to beat on the
play. And later in the game, you can copy your giant Dinosaur and cast an
additional spell because Tilonalli’s Shapeshifter is only three mana. But
unfortunately, that’s the best-case scenario.
In many other cases, when you’re behind or don’t have good attacks, this
card does absolutely nothing. Most aggressive creatures can still trade
when behind, but this one completely lacks that dimension. Overall, I’m
going to guess this card is just too powerful to pass up, and I’m going to
start the format taking it early to try it out. It has the potential to be
busted, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t turn out that way.
Planeswalkers are often powerful forms of card-advantage, and hence
slam-dunk bombs in Limited. But sometimes you get a true stinker. While I
don’t think Jace, Cunning Castaway is unplayable, I don’t think it’s good.
Let’s look at the different parts of the card.
First off, three loyalty is a good number to start with for three mana. If
you cast Jace and immediately use the plus ability, it is unlikely that
your opponent can kill it even if you missed your two-drop (assuming you’re
on the play). While this is a good starting point, Jace still has to do
relevant things in order to be good.
This ability effectively has two modes. It either lets you loot once, or it
does absolutely nothing. A three-mana planeswalker that has the ability
“+1: Loot” is actually pretty solid in Limited.
Unfortunately, this ability isn’t always going to be online. You need to be
able to attack without being blocked, and that isn’t trivial on many
battlefield states. Additionally, if you’re attacking to get a marginal
advantage from this looting ability, then you’re less likely to have
creatures back to protect Jace.
My problem with it is that, if this ability is always working, then you’re
always able to attack your opponent and your opponent is not able
to attack back to kill Jace, Cunning Castaway. This doesn’t sound like a
game you’re losing anyway!
First off, I’m glad that the Illusion sacrifice ability no longer counts
for abilities (as we saw from Labyrinth Guardian). If this 2/2 died from
targeted abilities, it would be much worse. As is, it’s still not great,
but serviceable. The problem is that a 2/2 body is just bad for three mana,
so I would only like this part if the plus ability that could be activated
the next turn or two was good. But it’s also mediocre.
Again, this ability seems pretty bad from behind, and not even that great
when ahead or at parity. It’s just a medium creature. Hopefully the
ultimate does something to string it all together…
I don’t need to say much about this. Sure, it’s cool, but it still doesn’t
necessarily win the game. I could see a pattern where you just keep
plussing both copies and it’s very hard for your opponent to kill both, and
then once you ultimate one of them, you rinse and repeat. But since these
cards aren’t that great, why doesn’t your opponent just ignore the Jaces
and kill you? And if that’s not an option, you were ahead anyway.
All in all, Jace seems terrible from behind and reasonable while ahead. At
parity you’ll be able to try and take over the game with the ultimate, but
even that doesn’t seem too detrimental. I don’t think this is a high pick,
but it seems playable. I’ll start taking it around Pick 6 or 7 if I’m
already blue, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it perform worse than
that.