The story so far, summarized:
Memnarch’s armies have been decimated as the people of Kamigawa strike not at his armies in the field but at his homeworld of Mirrodin. The Seat of the Synod lies in ruins, the Great Furnace grows cold and the Vault of Whispers falls silent. The market is down and the deficit is up. Even Memnarch’s disciples have deserted him after the collapse of his supposedly indestructible citadel, and without the power base to sustain his armies he has been forced to withdraw from the ravaged Kamigawa by the awakening of the vengeful spirit Kataki. In his place he has left a new government under the leadership of the war profiteer Toshiro Umezawa. While his motives are anything but pure, to maintain his grip on power he has been forced to attempt to maintain a fragile peace between both worlds as he and his brother seek to become the Saviors of Kamigawa. Meanwhile, to make it match current events, I’m going to have everyone forget about everything that’s going on in the world about halfway through the first color and instead focus on celebrity gossip and bad puns.
The Usual Stuff About Ratings:
****: A card I consider “listworthy” for inclusion in the top ten cards of the set.
*** – A good Constructed card that offers something you want at a reasonable price
** – This card isn’t that great a deal, but it’s worth playing in the right situation or when there are few alternatives.
* – This card is unworthy of Constructed play. It might be a first pick Limited card, but that is beside the point.
I don’t do halves, and the system is intentionally approximate. If it’s close, I’ll chose one side or the other. If you want the real answer, read what I have to say. However, I’m going to introduce a new rule this time to save some trouble, which is that if a card is totally generic and the star rating is one or two and there isn’t anything there, I won’t take pains to explain the details if I don’t feel it is necessary. I’m not here to soothe a card’s ego.
And now, the continuation…
Aether Shockwave 3W
Instant
Choose one – Tap all Spirits; or tap all non-Spirit creatures.
The ripples of a war can exhaust a whole world. The key is being able to pick one.
*
The set starts out with an easy to card to dismiss, because in the best case scenario this is four mana to tap all of your opponents’ creatures and that is a horrible deal. Aether Shockwave is far worse than that because you have to worry about an opponent playing both spirits and non-spirits or using the same side of the divide that you are. A discussion of whether this has any use in Limited might be interesting, but my set reviews don’t deal with Limited because I feel that it is impossible to judge Limited cards in any useful manner without trying them out.
Araba Mothrider 1W
Creature – Human Samurai
Flying, Bushido 1
1/1
A moth with its rider is weaker than without one, so make sure to bring a sword.
*
Creatures that cost two mana and whose primary purpose is to attack need to be able to do a minimum of two damage when they are unblocked. Araba Mothrider only does one, so the discussion ends there. Even in block, White has plenty of good two Drops.
Celestial Kirin 2WW
Legendary Creature – Kirin Spirit
Flying
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, destroy all permanents with that spell’s converted mana cost.
3/3
The tiniest trifle could cause an Armageddon.
***
Spirits have some obviously problematic interactions with Celestial Kirin, but legendary status will solve those problems. Celestial Kirin will in fact be very helpful in a fight between copies of cards like Kodama because when you play yours you’ll get to destroy theirs and then keep your copy. Using legends as your creatures also lets you combine two disadvantages because both prevent you from playing multiple copies of the same creature at once. Arcane spells are even safer because without creatures you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying them. Celestial Kirin is also a 3/3 flyer, which means that you get more than three of your four mana back directly in terms of creature value if you can prevent the effect from getting in your way. The potential to gain massive card and time advantage from the Kirin’s ability should make up for the rest with room to spare in that case.
Charge Across the Araba 4W
Instant – Arcane
Sweep – Return any number of plains you control to their owner’s hand. Creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn for each plains returned this way.
A fine job, but what happened to the Araba?
**
Five is a lot of mana but this card is going to have the nasty habit of ending games. It feels like a Green card more than a White card if you take away its casting cost or its reference to returning Plains instead of Forests. On turn five or six a WW deck that had the lands to cast this could give all its creatures +5/+5, making even a small attack lethal. In Standard that doesn’t impress but in block this could be an important weapon in White’s arsenal. If White there has one huge problem it is not being able to finish off the opponent, and this will end the game on turn 5 if your opponent dawdles and you can get through with three creatures. It also makes it far more dangerous to hand White a card like Heartbeat of Spring, as even a +3/+3 can get lethal quickly. The best part about such a play is that returning the lands is a trivial cost, or with Hokori involved could be a big advantage that drastically cuts this card’s long term casting cost if it doesn’t end the game. That doesn’t mean that this is something worth packing three or four copies of, but the threat of this card is a valuable weapon. Don’t let your opponent feel safe.
Cowed by Wisdom W
Enchant Creature
Enchanted creature can’t attack or block unless its controller pays 1 for each card in your hand. (This cost is paid as attackers or blockers are declared.)
He’s waiting for the cows to come home.
**
Keeping lots of cards in your hand is not as easy as it looks and it will be getting harder rather than easier. If the new cards that reward you for having a big hand become popular, players will start including more and more discard in their decks to fight against the strategy. Discard’s big drawbacks are that it doesn’t impact the board and it goes dead later in the game. If you can reverse both of those problems, it becomes a very hard offer to turn down for anyone with access to Black. Cowed by Wisdom is going to be a prohibitive cost to pay if you keep your hand full, but even the decks that most want to keep their hands full frequently find their hands less than full.
The biggest use of this card is likely to be the Block Tallowisp decks. When you use the Tallowisp engine, fetching other enchantments will keep your hand full while you use Cowed on several of their creatures to attack for the win. Even forcing someone to pay two or three mana will often make using that creature impossible this turn and prohibitively expensive for several more. For one more mana you can step up and get Pacifism, so the one mana saved seems to be a bad deal for those with access to wider formats than block.
Curtain of Light 1W
Instant
Target attacking unblocked creature becomes blocked.
Draw a card.
Brilliant!
*
Cantrips have value for two reasons. The first reason is that you can gain the effect without costing yourself a card, which lets you play a card with a trivial effect like Curtain of Light. The other big advantage is that you can effectively cycle cantrips if their effect is not what you are looking for. Curtain of Light won’t just be useless to you if your opponent isn’t attacking with targetable creatures, it will be highly annoying or impossible to cycle the card away. It also has to be cast on your opponents’ turn, so you have to hold back mana in order to cast it. There is risk involved in this card, and there is not much reward. The good news is that this can be a good way to buy time against an Umezawa’s Jitte, but the practical issues are far too big.
Descendant of Kiyomaro 1WW
Creature – Human Soldier
As long as you have more cards in hand than each opponent, Descendant of Kiyomaro gets +1/+2 and has “Whenever this creature deals combat damage, you gain 3 life.”
2/3
Never leave anyone you love less than a million cards in hand.
***
Descendant of Kiyomaro has two modes – a 2/3 creature for three and a 3/5 spirit linked creature for three. The first is almost a full mana too expensive, and the second is a wonderful deal. The key question therefore becomes how you intend to keep more cards in your hand than your opponent. A control deck could run this card very effectively, especially if it was assisted by discard spells. The natural deck for this card is a W/B discard-control deck. Such a deck would get the full benefit of high toughness and of the life gained when Descendant deals combat damage. An offensive deck would have a harder time maintaining a big hand and wouldn’t get as much out of keeping around the more powerful version. As with most of these cards, it will weaken the more other players care about hand size.
Eiganjo Free-Riders 3W
Creature – Human Soldier
Flying
At the beginning of your upkeep, return a white creature you control to it’s owners hand.
3/4
Weenie, cash or mana. No one rides for free.
**
This compares highly unfavorably with Stampeding Wildebeasts. It has weaker stats and the opportunities to return creatures to your hand for fun and profit seem far weaker. There is no Wall of Blossoms, no Spike Feeder and no Spike Weaver. The difference between three and five power is especially huge for these creatures because they require a mana commitment that will often force them to be the only attacker. Five damage a turn is a good clock and three is not. For this to be worth the cost there would have to be multiple white creatures that you benefit from returning to your hand and that are worthy of play without the Free-Riders. I’m stumped.
Enduring Ideal 5WW
Sorcery
Search your library for an Enchantment card and put it into play.
Epic (For the rest of the game you can’t play spells. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, copy this spell except for it’s epic ability.)
Worship it.
**
Should you win the game if you get to search your library every turn for an enchantment? Assuming you’re not in a giant hole at the time, yes, absolutely it should win you the game, assuming you’ve put a lot of expensive enchantments into your deck. But who wants to play with a lot of expensive enchantments?
The only way this makes sense is if your goal is to go epic as quickly as possible. The goal will be to power this out around turn four, and then proceeding from there. After that you can’t cast spells, so try to keep some man lands around or something else that you can accomplish without casting spells. A variant on that is to make one of your early targets Genju of the Realm, since activating it is easy enough and that gives you an 8/12 trampling creature. You only get one, but it should a pretty good route to victory, especially if you back it up with a couple of Confiscates. Go get Zur’s Weirding, because it’s not like you care about what you draw at this point. The key problem is powering this out quickly enough to be worthwhile given the sacrifices you have to make to the rest of your deck to make it work and how many other good late game options there are. Using a Tooth and Nail type of mana base illustrates how much better this engine could be, so you’ll have to do better and that means going all out with one-shot mana. The resulting deck looks to me to be janky +without all that much compensation. Even after you go epic, you’re going to be vulnerable to many things. They can counter the Epic spells, for example, or they could use Wear Away to make your life a living hell.
Ghost-lit Redeemer W
Creature – Spirit
W,T : You gain 2 life.
Channel – 1W, Discard Ghost-lit Redeemer: You gain 4 life.
1/1
A spirit dies so a wizard can live. Fair trade.
**
This is a noble attempt to give people life gain, and it seems like a reasonable way to sweep the one drops off the table with Celestial Kirin for a control deck in Block, but this is not exactly Renewed Faith when used as a spell. If you channel Redeemer you get four life, which is a lot less than six and there’s no way to cycle it instead. The compensation will have to come from casting it, which presumably lets you trade off on turn 1 or use it to gain life continuously. That does seem reasonably promising if it comes down on turn 1 and then frequently gets used. It’s hard to get a two-point swing from a one-drop, so this could end up buying you a huge amount of time. In exchange you have to put a creature into play for a strategy that wouldn’t normally want to expose one to removal, especially to Jitte. The result is a flexible card but one that is going to be the worst of whichever world is most needed. I would much rather have the option to cycle than the option to try and establish this as a creature.
Hail of Arrows XW
Instant
Hail of Arrows deals X damage divided as you choose among any number of target attacking creatures.
“Keep practicing. I can still see the sun.” – Takeno, Samurai General
*
This is another one of those blocking dependant cards that is tolerable in the best case scenario and terrible if any one of several things go wrong. When it works this is not particularly mana efficient and a sorry excuse for a Fireball or even a Sandstorm. Going around saying “oh look what they gave White” is not my idea of an enjoyable Monday.
Hand of Honor WW
Creature – Samurai
Bushido 1
Protection from black
“If only one hand is right, do not use the other.” – Nagao, Bound by Honor
2/2
***
Which is better, first strike or Bushido 1? For a creature this small it is almost certainly Bushido making this superior to White Knight. Its competition is stiff in this block with Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Kami of Ancient Law and Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, but the removal is primarily Black, so this has a lot going for it. If it didn’t have to worry about Hideous Laughter that would be a huge boost, but this should still be there fighting it out for the two-drop slots in White creature decks for the next year. It is going to be an intense battle, because this is one of three quality two-drops in this set alone.
Inner-Chamber Guard – 1W
Creature – Human Samurai
Bushido 2
0/2
Don’t do anything wrong and you’ll never see him.
*
He was missing from my first spoiler list. I wasn’t missing much. I realize this can block as a 2/4, but give me a break. White has actively good two-drops.
Kataki, War’s Wage 1W
Legendary Creature – Spirit
All artifacts have “At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice this artifact unless you pay 1.”
“Make war a wage none can pay and you shall know peace.” – Kataki
2/1
****
Where have you been for the past year and a half? Now that the nuclear option has finally been invoked, we finally have a card that can be painlessly maindecked and makes Affinity’s life a living hell. I don’t care that there are far fewer reasons to play it now that it has finally arrived, I’m going to give it my highest rating because good behavior should always be rewarded, even if it arrives on the scene one set too late to matter. This is not enough to turn the tide around on its own, but it is a huge piece of the puzzle and gives white a weapon it badly needed without being terribly unfair about it. When your opponent has no artifacts, this is not the best creature out there but it still can fight the good fight and even the ability to annoy Sensei’s Divining Top and Umezawa’s Jitte can make opponents think twice. Top can be redeposited in your hand easily enough, but if you’re forced to do that then this has cost your opponent valuable time.
Kitsune Bonesetter 2W
Creature – Fox Cleric
T: Prevent the next 3 damage that would be dealt to target creature this turn. Play this ability only if you have more cards in hand than each opponent.
0/1
Ask Doctor Bonesetter. He knows more than you do.
*
As with most of the hands-full cards, the right way to begin thinking about them is to first consider how much you are rewarded when they’re operational. In this case, you get a strange utility creature that will doubtless be useful sometimes but isn’t even as good as a Kabuto Moth. That’s not going to get it done.
Kitsune Dawnblade 4W
Creature – Fox Samurai
Bushido 1
When Kitsune Dawnblade comes into play, you may tap target creature.
2/3
Those who laugh at him awake to the tap of his blade.
*
Assuming that he really costs five mana, I’ll take the risk.
Kitsune Loreweaver 1W
Creature – Fox Cleric
1W: Kitsune Loreweaver gets +0/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of cards in your hand.
2/1
They don’t study the past. They study the future.
***
Kitsune Loreweaver is not about to die in a fight with anything in the first few turns as long as you have two mana on hand, and later in the game if you have a full hand it can survive against almost anything. It can face down a Darksteel Colossus if you activate him enough times. The problem is that there are several other White creatures that are more mana efficient in this slot and will beat up Loreweaver in a fight, forcing you to spend mana to keep him alive without him being able to kill their creature off at all. Keeping mana untapped like this while building an army won’t be easy. He can’t be killed by Hideous Laughter or even Sickening Shoal if you’re cautious, but then you need to protect him from their other removal spells. Most of the time I think it’s probably going to be more important to keep up the pressure, because decks that want a White two-drop won’t be competitive in the late game or able to save cards in hand or mana very often.
Kiyomaro, First to Stand 3WW
Legendary Creature – Spirit
Kiyomaro has power and toughness equal to the number of cards in your hand.
If you have four or more cards in your hand, Kiyomaro has Vigilance.
Whenever Kiyomaro deals damage, if you have seven or more cards in your hand, you gain 7 life.
*/*
No relation.
**
It is important for cards that depend on the size of your hand that they be kept as cheap as possible because every land you use to play them is one less card in your hand. Kiyomaro does have the advantage that you can combine him with Charge Across the Araba, which will do double digit damage without any help from your other creatures and leave Kiyomaro large for future turns. That’s not the fastest plan in the world, especially given your lands must all be Plains for it to work, but it is kind of neat. In general Kiyomaro’s natural place is right after a fourth turn Wrath of God, leaving you with a reasonably full hand that you can hopefully fill up using a card or two from another color. If you’re not crossing the seven-card threshold, Kiyomaro is far from exciting because the decks that will be able to make him reasonably large won’t get much from his presence so you’re going to have to go for the full effect where you’re going to get a double digit swing in life totals every turn. Charge Across the Aruba is one way to do that, but it carries obvious huge risks. This one may require either Tallowisp, some old fashioned card drawing or both.
Moonwing Moth 1WW
Creature – Insect
Flying
W: Moonwing Moth gets +0/+1 until end of turn.
2/1
What do you do if they survive the flame?
*
This card would be the strongest of the two-drops if it cost one less mana, but it would not be as out of place in that group as it would be as a three-drop in a Constructed deck. White has a ton of great two-drops but it seems like the rule is that the good times stop at two. Starting with three mana White starts getting odd creatures more suited to other deck types, forcing WW curves to retain their narrow focus. Perhaps they’re trying to save casual players from themselves.
Nikko-Onna 2W
Creature – Spirit
When Nikko-Onna comes into play, destroy target enchantment.
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, you may return Nikko-Onna to its owner’s hand.
2/2
Pile of money, sound asleep.
***
Viridian Shaman has more targets, but Nikko-Onna can be picked up at instant speed both to protect him and to reuse him. With two of them you can kill any number of enchantments, but even with one most arcane or spirit-based decks should have little trouble wiping the board clear of enchantments. Night of Soul’s Betrayal and Heartbeat of Spring are the obvious Block targets, forcing opponents to be far more cautious with them since White decks already have plenty of good two-drops, but lack both good spirits and good three-drops. That makes Nikko a natural for sideboards and perhaps even maindecks depending on how the format develops.
Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker 3W
Legendary Creature – Human Advisor
Whenever a source an opponent controls deals damage to you, that player sacrifices a permanent.
2/2
“They did what? Release the hound.” – Michiko Konda
**
I don’t understand the flavor involved in a truth seeker forcing those who attack you to lose permanents, but it does make a little sense in a sort of Truth, Justice and the American Way sort of paradigm. The more important question is whether this is any good. Every time they hit you, they lose a permanent. That potentially makes it rather difficult to kill you by anything less than halves without getting into a rather difficult position especially if you have life gain. The bad news is that a 2/2 White creature is not the easiest thing to protect and that it does take a certain amount of time before this starts to hit your opponent where it hurts. The first hit is still free if it kills you. There have been attempts to print cards like this before, for example No Mercy, and previous attempts have gone a step further and taken out the offending card rather than a card of your opponents’ choice. Here if they do find that legend they can feed it irrelevant cards to let it finish the job, plus they have the option to kill Michiko.
Plow through Reito 1W
Instant – Arcane
Sweep – Return any number of plains you control to their owner’s hand. Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each plains returned this way.
“Charging is for the nobles. All that is left to us is to plow.”
*
If you’re going to do something like this, do it right. Yes, this can be a way to squeeze in a few extra points of damage but it’s nothing like what you can get from the heavy-duty version. If you’re using this for a small bonus, it’s a bad deal. If you’re using it for a large bonus, there is a far better one available.
Presence of the Wise 2WW
Sorcery
You gain 2 life for each card in your hand.
“Who were you expecting, Gerrard? He’s never around when you need him.” – Masako
***
I’ve used this card in its previous form extensively in the past, and the slow pace of today’s game would seem like a good setting in which to take advantage of the cards that are still in your hand to pick up a lot of life on the fourth turn. If this card has a problem, it is that many of today’s decks won’t have that much trouble doing 40 damage if they could have done 20, but when Tooth goes away that could help your prospects a lot. You also have to watch out for the discard that people may start packing.
Promise of Bunrei 2W
Enchantment
Whenever a creature you control is put into a graveyard from play, sacrifice Promise of Bunrei. If you do, put four 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens into play.
There is no justice, only vengeance.
***
Promise of Bunrei will give you four power worth of creatures at a cost of three mana, and that is a good deal. The key is getting the most out of the timing of its activation. This can be an excellent way of defending against control decks that use board sweepers, allowing you to continue deploying creatures to the table without losing them to the next mass removal spell. Get four damage on the table quickly, then put this down and suddenly Wrath of God doesn’t look all that hot. In the right matchup where you also have enough creatures to start off your attack, the Promise can be even better than playing creatures directly and that makes it a great card. However, the inability to use it as part of your initial rush and the fact that your opponent will often control when it activates means that this does not seem good enough to run in the maindeck of a normal metagame. You don’t want to wake up to find that by the time you have the tokens they’ve been outclassed.
Pure Intentions W
Instant – Arcane
Whenever a spell or ability an opponent controls causes you to discard cards this turn, return those cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Whenever a spell or ability an opponent controls causes you to discard Pure Intentions, return Pure Intentions from your graveyard to your hand at end of turn.
“You know my heart is pure.” – Phil Hellmuth
**
Alternate flavor: There’s no such thing. The problem is that you have to make a choice between casting Pure Intentions and discarding Pure Intentions. If you get hit with a card like Distress, you’re still going to lose a card. If you get hit with Waking Nightmare, you’re still going to lose a card. The only job this does properly is deal with effects like Nezumi Shortfang. That’s not the most irrelevant thing, and this does clearly help against someone who is going to unleash a discard barrage, but it doesn’t do enough to earn sideboard slots unless the situation is extreme.
Reverence 2WW
Enchantment
Creatures with power 2 or less can’t attack you.
“Let them eat cake.”
****
This is one scary card to be across from. Many decks will outright lose half of their cards, and some will lose more. There is no drawback, there is no one hit exception. All the one- and two-drops in the world will essentially become useless for everything except blocking if you don’t equip them. This is an investment well worth making, shutting down Meluko and other token generators and Rude Awakening as well as one- and two-drops. Once this is down, only a small number of spells need be contained to finish the game. A series of even exchanges becomes a scarily easy option. Even if you don’t try to shut your opponent out of the game and win by default, this still changes the landscape in dramatic fashion when you’re playing it fair. For older formats, cards like Humility and Meekstone can complete the shutdown while doing good work on their own. One card I might look to combine with this one is Damping Matrix, because it takes out Sword of Fire and Ice and Umezawa’s Jitte, as well as taking away any secondary abilities of the creatures that can’t attack you.
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant 2W
Legendary Creature – Fox Monk
When you have 30 or more life, flip Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant.
2/2
/// FLIP ///
Rune-Tail’s Essence
Legendary Enchantment
Prevent all damage that would be dealt to creatures you control.
Have infinite life and never face death.
*
Thirty life is not something you end up with by accident. When you get to thirty, it tends to be on purpose, and if you don’t then this is not a good creature. What happens when you hit thirty? Your creatures no longer take damage. That’s nice, but not as nice as it might seem to be at first. Those creatures still have lots of entertaining ways to die or be ignored, and you did just give one of them up. Don’t get me wrong, I would happily pay three mana for the ability, but what creature deck regularly hits thirty life points? It’s something that anyone who should be interested in this effect shouldn’t be able to do with the cards at his disposal.
Shinen of Stars’ Light 2W
Creature – Spirit
First strike
Channel – 1W, Discard Shinen of Stars’ Light: Target creature gains first strike until end of turn.
2/1
For when you can’t let the sun shinen.
*
As the two-mana creature I briefly thought this was, it was clearly inferior to several others in this set alone in addition to other cards elsewhere in the block. Giving a creature first strike is neat, but when it costs you a card and two mana it is unlikely to be a big win. It’s much more likely to be a reasonably nice exchange and nothing more. Instead, this is a three-drop and therefore woefully inadequate when played as a creature making this the combination of two hugely overpriced effects neither of which has much of an upside.
Spiritual Visit W
Instant – Arcane
Put a 1/1 colorless Spirit creature token into play.
Splice onto Arcane W
***
One-mana arcane spells are highly valuable to splice strategies, as are cheap splice effects that give you tangible benefits. This offers both, and every time you splice this onto even a Blessed Breath or a Glacial Ray you have something of a win there. Every time you have a spare mana while casting a spell you get a creature. It’s kind of like a better version of Psychic Puppetry when their creatures don’t fly, because you can use this to block with the tokens in addition to your other options. It’s hard for a spell to be that bad when you get a token as a side effect and the spell does something you were meaning to do anyway. This could be good enough to put the arcane decks that didn’t quite make it in Philly back into the picture, especially if it gets a little help. I know I would have killed to add in a spell like this one.
Torii Watchward 4W
Creature – Spirit
Vigilance
Soulshift 4
3/3
Labor and liberal democrats beware.
*
This is a Limited creature, offering several abilities that make it worth picking but nothing to make it worth putting into a deck when you can play cards like Hikari.
Looking at what White has to offer, my biggest concern is that White has become even more obsessed with life gain, damage prevention and casting spells on attackers and blockers. Its worthy creatures seem to have become focused on one- and two-drops at the expense of the rest of the curve, and that means you have too much of one thing and not enough of other things. It is hard to give a color enough playables when aside from cheap drops all of its core strategies have to be pushed to the extreme to get playable cards. The one exception to that are the global effects, which in this set means Reverence. Reverence has the feel of not just a Ghostly Prison but of a Wrath of God or Humility. We need to be careful, because otherwise White will end up with only two ways to play: Either a deck focused on cheap creatures or a deck based on using its global control elements.
Oh, and thank you for Kataki. It’s good to know you care.