Welcome to Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty First Impressions week!
All week long, various members of the SCG Staff will share their thoughts on the Top 5 Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty cards in each format. Today we’ll begin with Standard with Alchemy, Historic, Pioneer, and Modern coming over the course of the week. To add a little fun to the mix, a scoring system has been put in place so that we can get an idea of what card ranked in what place in the aggregate to close out each article. The scoring system is as follows:
- 1st — 5 points
- 2nd — 4 points
- 3rd — 3 points
- 4th — 2 points
- 5th — 1 point
Let’s start with the one, the only, PVDDR!
Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
- Thundering Raiju
- The Wandering Emperor
- Reckoner Bankbuster
- Rabbit Battery
- Thirst for Knowledge
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is a hard set to evaluate for two main reasons. The first is that it’s jumping into an entirely new Standard format. The best deck in the format has just been banned and it’s not clear how the format is adapting just yet.
The second reason is that several of the new cards are things we’ve never seen before or things we haven’t seen in Standard in a long time: creatures that turn into Equipment and then back into creatures, Sagas that transform into creatures, cards that care about modified permanents, cards that care about you having both an artifact and an enchantment, Ninjas, and so on. On top of that, every card has about 300 words in it — on each side — so they’re hard to parse at a first glance. A lot of these cards will just have to be played for us to evaluate properly. That said, here are my initial guesses.
The first card on my list, Thundering Raiju, is a creature that’s at the worst possible a 4/4 with haste for four mana, but that has a lot more potential than that. In the right deck, this is potentially better than Hellrider — it will shoot them for each creature you have and then it will grow something (or itself). And if you’re on the play, it will be a 5/5 attacker by the time Edgar, Charmed Groom can come down to block it. There’s a chance this doesn’t see that much play in Alchemy because it competes with Town-Razer Tyrant as a four-mana red creature, but in Standard it’ll almost certainly be good.
The second card is another four-mana permanent — The Wandering Emperor. The Wandering Emperor seems like the type of card that you really have to play with to appreciate, because playing against this card seems like a nightmare. What do you do? Do you attack into it and lose your creature to the -2 ability? Do you block and lose to the first strike ability? Or do you pass the turn and have them cast it at the end of the turn to make a Samurai token? It’s almost certainly going to be great the turn you reach four mana, but the big question is whether it offers enough of an upside as a regular planeswalker after that to justify. My inclination is that it does.
My third card, Reckoner Bankbuster, is a totally speculative pick. Mazemind’s Tome was very good, so I think this can be as well. You can activate Reckoner Bankbuster even if you still have counters on it, assuming you can produce three power, and after you’ve activated it three times you actually get a real card. In control mirrors, I can see this card filling the role of a way to gain card advantage but also a way to end games post-sideboard, when people won’t be able to keep as many removal spells in their decks.
The fourth card is my pick for best reconfigure card (though I think Blade of the Oni and Lion Sash are both close) — Rabbit Battery. The bar for red one-drops is very low, and this more than clears it. It gets in for chip damage early and then makes big haste characters later on. Right now the best aggro decks are not red-based, but if there is a heavy red aggro deck, then Rabbit Battery will be great, and I’m going to bet there will be one with Thundering Raiju as an incentive.
My last pick, Thirst for Knowledge, has a lot of history; it was quite good when it was first printed and it saw play in older formats as well. It’s not a surefire bet, because there’s a lot of very good card drawing right now, so those slots are highly contested, but Thirst for Meaning and Thirst for Discovery have both seen play as well, so it stands to reason that Thirst for Knowledge might.
Shaheen Soorani
- March of Otherworldly Light
- Tamiyo, Compleated Sage
- Blade of the Oni
- The Wandering Emperor
- Mech Hangar
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty has the feel of a true winner at the conclusion of preview season. It has weapons that reach across multiple formats, with the biggest potential impact being in Standard. Most folks have turned their back on the former king of formats, for good reasons. The sets have been mediocre before this, attempting to turn back the power level dial, while allowing Standard to become competitively unplayable. The recent bans have helped make Standard decent, but it may have been too little, too late. This new set will continue to enhance the format, hopefully drawing players back soon.
At the bottom of the list is a land that will see significant play if any of the Vehicles become mainstream. Mech Hangar has high upside, with a strong floor. It taps for colorless mana, making it an easy inclusion into most Standard mana bases. Vehicles and Pilots can be cast from it, as it produces any color for those two card types and animates Vehicles in the mid- and late-game without requiring a crew.
Blade of the Oni is another card on my list that I will not play much, but others will. It’s a fairly costed creature and becomes a devastating Equipment on any future threat you produce. Cards that give this type of use range have a high probability of getting played, so I expect to see it in black aggro decks moving forward.
The rest of my Top 5 contains cards that fit right into my wheelhouse, especially the white spells.
The Wandering Emperor is a bit lower on my list because of its first ability, but do not let it fool you. It removes creatures and produces threats, while also doing so at instant speed the first turn it arrives. I’m a sucker for cards like this and adding a flash component is a huge boost. March of Otherworldly Light is my favorite card of the set, easily surpassing any white removal that Standard has had in recent years. This is a multi-format banger that will see extensive play, especially with the wide variety of threats is removes for a potentially low mana cost.
The last card on my list rests solidly as my #2 — Tamiyo, Compleated Sage. Tamiyo has all the bells and whistles for a powerful planeswalker, while also having a reduced mana cost. Phryexian mana is basically free, and I’m very surprised to see it again. It does reduce the loyalty some, but that does not deter much from its power level. Tamiyo will see play and luckily no Simic-based spells have caused us headaches in Standard, leaving us nothing to worry about!
Dom Harvey
- Hotshot Mechanic
- Reckoner Bankbuster
- Atsushi, the Blazing Sky
- Rabbit Battery
- Invoke Calamity
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is exactly what I want for Constructed — a set full of exciting tools that don’t slot cleanly into existing archetypes. There aren’t any obvious standouts to me and I fully expect everyone else’s lists to look totally different. That’s great!
Mono-White Aggro had underperformed in Standard leading up to the latest round of bans; the most successful lists were so radical that they picked up a double splash just for Halana and Alena, Partners and that has become stock now with the loss of Faceless Haven, the only reason to keep up a monocoloured manabase. The deck had strong plays up the curve except for the bottom, where it desperately wanted another two-power one-drop. Hotshot Mechanic would be appealing for that alone, but it’s also the perfect pilot for the Vehicles in this set (or an all-too-familiar one in Esika’s Chariot) once it can’t attack well itself.
Mazemind Tome overperformed in every deck I tried it in. Reckoner Bankbuster is just about similar enough to pique my interest. If you cast this on Turn 2 in a control mirror, the opponent has to flip the script quickly to avoid being buried.
This time the legendary Dragon cycle faces much stiffer competition, but I have the highest hopes for Atsushi, the Blazing Sky, especially in a world without Divide by Zero (or the more immediately impactful Town-Razer Tyrant over in Alchemy). It backs up Goldspan Dragon as a Dragon’s Fire enabler that also enables the same wild mana generation via Treasure or can curve into a big The Meathook Massacre or Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor in a Rakdos deck that’s aiming high.
Rabbit Battery should be a cornerstone of an aggressive red deck — but which one? The format was hostile to these decks before and the card quality simply wasn’t there anyway. I don’t know for sure that this will change. If it does, Rabbit Battery will be a big part of it.
Invoke Calamity is a wildcard in every sense of the word. I don’t have a use in mind for this yet but I can imagine the Galvanic Iteration + Unexpected Windfall shell that got Alrund’s Epiphany banned getting up to mischief with this. Windfall, in particular, is a great card to recur with Invoke Calamity alongside a removal spell.
Bryan Gottlieb
- Moonsnare Prototype
- Lizard Blades
- Michiko’s Reign of Truth
- Experimental Synthesizer
- Secluded Courtyard
I suspect that I’ve just put forth a Top 5 list that looks nothing like the ones composed by my peers. This means I’m either an idiot, or a realist. Maybe both. You can talk about the planeswalkers and solid value creatures of this set, and I get the desire to do so. Cards like Tamiyo, Compleated Sage and The Wandering Emperor are likely good to extremely good. My problem with them is that they do sort of pedestrian stuff, even if they are doing it in a novel way. It’s very nice to have a four- or five-mana planeswalker that generates advantage. Is that better than having an Esika’s Chariot? A Goldspan Dragon? How about a Sorin the Mirthless or an Arlinn, the Pack’s Hope?
I’m sure in some situations the answer is yes, but we’re not really moving the needle here. If you want cards that actually have the capacity to change Standard, find the ones that do something different and empower new archetypes. Moonsnare Prototype singlehandedly puts artifacts back on the menu and gives a whole slew of decks a way to play ahead of curve. On top of that, it doesn’t have the typical mana rock problem of late-game copies going completely dead. You’ve got to work to make Moonsnare Prototype good, but it’s the type of card that can hold up an entire archetype on its back.
Lizard Blades’s success will depend a lot on the type of removal that’s being played. If there are lots of Spikefield Hazards and Play with Fires, it loses its luster. But if people are playing more expensive or sorcery-speed removal, Lizard Blades’s output is sort of unreal. It functions as a repository for any early pump effects and also supersizes larger threats in the late-game. I wonder what type of card can benefit from that… hello, Michiko’s Reign of Truth. This card is slow, but the output is off the charts for two mana, and it generally scales well into the late-game.
Experimental Synthesizer is potentially three cards’ worth of output from a one-mana artifact. Again, a card that requires work, but when you’ve got tools like Oni-Cult Anvil, how hard is it really to benefit from? Your spells really want to be cheap or modal, and Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty has plenty of options that suit those bills.
I close out my list with Secluded Courtyard, which probably looks especially strange given the presence of the legendary channel lands. Those cards are all great and will be present in basically every Standard deck. They will struggle to create new archetypes though, and don’t seem like they are going to catapult any existing strategies to a new tier. They’re just a tool that everyone has access to. But hard tribal decks having access to the best mana is exactly the type of thing that can move decks away from simply playing the best cards.
The cards on this list are also ones that I see as having potential longevity in the format and forming pillars even after the rotation and addition of more sets. There’s always going to be another planeswalker, but how often does Standard get a tool like Moonsnare Prototype?
Ari Lax
- Atsushi, the Blazing Sky
- Rabbit Battery
- Thundering Raiju
- Lizard Blades
- Kumano Faces Kakkazan
I’m making a bold statement here. The most important thing Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is going to do to Standard is make red a real threat in Standard beyond the Izzet Control decks, and I’m doubling down on that by declaring the five most important cards in the set will be red.
In fifth place, I have the second-best red one-drop in the set in Kumano Faces Kakkazan. It’s a traditional aggro one-drop that has some impact past Turn 1 but real diminishing returns, but it’s hard to build a good aggressive deck without multiple cards in this slot.
Following that up I have maybe the best two-drop in the set. Really, red decks only have so much space for two-drops just based on the relative inefficiency compared to one-drops, so expect them to only load up on the absolute best. It’s a bit weird here since the reconfigure Equipment have diminishing returns so you might get a mix, but I have that best one as Lizard Blades. It plays as an aggressive card that really magnifies Kumano Faces Kakkazan on curve, but also hammers hard in more midrange Gruul aggressive shells. Ogre Head Helm might take the top spot in dedicated red decks and the first Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei is pretty great, but Lizard Blades is the most broadly powerful of the lot.
In third, I have Thundering Raiju. The baseline of this card is a five-power attacker for four. The upside is Hellrider that pumps the rest of your team. The secret part of the card that will drive the point home for many people is the first time they get double Raiju attacked on Turn 5. The game will last approximately as long as it takes Arena to resolve the triggers, and they will get how powerful an effect Hellrider was and Thundering Raiju will be.
The best red one-drop is always going to be near the top of the importance list, and that honor goes to Rabbit Battery. It’s Lightning Mauler, another all-star of 2013 Standard, in installments with the long-term upside of letting you line up good sizings as the game progresses. Sure, Short Sword isn’t a Standard-playable card, but when you tack it onto a modest one-drop that also speeds up the rest of your beats, you have a ton of great options at minimal cost.
Finally…
Atsushi, the Blazing Sky is as good as I said it would be when it was first previewed. It’s the cheapest of the legendary Dragon cycle and somehow has the best abilities and is in the best color. Any time you take a step away from the true aggro that Thundering Raiju promotes, it is going to be the next stop for a midrange threat. It shouldn’t be hard to label Atsushi as a slam-dunk Standard all-star, so ready your exiling removal for the next twenty or so months of Standard.
And now, without further ado, the SCG Staff’s Top 5 Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty cards for Standard are…
5. Tamiyo, Compleated Sage — 4 points
T-4. March of Otherworldly Light, Hotshot Mechanic, and Moonsnare Prototype — 5 points
T-3 The Wandering Emperor and Lizard Blades — 6 points
2. Reckoner Bankbuster — 7 points
T-1 Thundering Raiju, Rabbit Battery, and Atsushi, the Blazing Sky — 8 points
Cya back here tomorrow for our thoughts on Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty’s impact on… well, I guess you’ll just have to see!
