Hello happy people! I hope that your day (and year) are doing as awesomely as possible, and if not yet, I hope it will be by the end of the year! Anyways, do you love Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty as much as I do? Probably!
This is a deep set with loads of amazing cards for kitchen table play like Commander, Five Color, Type Four, and multiplayer. Hence, I am giving you another deep dive into another Top Ten Cards from the Set, and we'll have two more Honorable Mentions for a total of 12 slots.
Last week I looked at twelve total cards including one of the "Invoke" cycle cards, a planeswalker, and the channel legendary land cycle that has everyone excited. You can check it out here and let me know you thought!
So therefore, this will basically be #24-#13.
Honorable Mention #1 (#24 Overall). Mechtitan Core
I enjoy the fact that there are people trying to make this work in Standard. I think this might be the most fun card in the set. And in casual play, fun wins. This 2-drop 2/4 is a bit on the small side, but you can exile this and four other vehicles and/or artifact dorks and then make a Voltron...er...Mechtitan Construct. The Construct for jumping through these hoops is a 10/10 which will win the game in two hits, and it has flying, vigilance, trample, lifelink and haste. Nice. No indestructible feels a bit missing. When this leaves play (bounces, exiles, dies or tucks) you get everything back that you exiled save for the Core, and note that they come back tapped so if they were dorks they cannot block until your untap step. I wish this were legendary I'd love to build a Commander deck around it. This will be a huge casual hit for kitchen table formats.
Honorable Mention #2 (#23 Overall). Spring-Leaf Avenger
Our only mono-Green card on today's list is this fun Insect Ninja. When you deal combat damage to a foe's face with the Avenger, you get a free Regrowth effect that can only target permanents. Nice! And then you can ninjutsu this for four mana and make sure you get at least one Regrowth before this is answered. This is my favorite ninjutsu card for Type Four in this set. Type Four only lets you cast one spell per turn (unless it was an alternate cost) and has any amount of mana. Well, ninjutsu is a free ability so you can do it after you cast your spell for the turn. Imagine your foe controls a dork that will shut you down. You cast your spell and answer it. Then you swing and now you Ninjutsu, hit for 6 damage and get a free Regrowth effect. That's a swingingly powerful turn of card advantage.
#10. (#22 Overall). Ao, the Dawn Sky
This is my fourth out of five in this cycle of Dragon Spirits. But this is still a decent threat. It's a 5/4 flying vigilance for 5 mana, which is on curve. You get two death trigger options, the first will let you dig seven from your library and put up to a 4 mana value total of non-land permanents onto the battlefield. Or you could toss two +1/+1 counters on each dork or Vehicle you control, which is pretty nice as well. Overall, it's fine with small casting cost stuff and going wide stuff, so it's good in white weenie and similar builds where you could get two dorks from its death or pump your team.
#9. (#21 Overall). Invoke Justice
We now have a mono-White Obzedat's Aid. This does the same and you toss some counters on your Vehicles and/or dorks, which is pretty good for the block. It's much better than the Aid, but it's harder to cast in three or four-color decks and easier in some ways and playable in things like Azorius and Boros. Enjoy this card a lot!!
#8. (#20 Overall). Kairi, the Swirling Sky
Our middle Dragon Spirit is this one. It's the biggest one at 6/6. When Kairi dies, your two options including bouncing any number of nonlands permanents with a total mana value of 6 or less or milling six cards and returning up to two instants and sorceries from your graveyard to your hand. Note a key card missing from the first ability - "nontoken." Since tokens that do not copy things have no cost, you can bounce every token from Treasures to Clues to 2/2 Samurai to 2/2 Zombies with decayed. And then, on top of that, you can bounce probably other things at the Commander table like a Consecrated Sphinx. And then the double ETB trigger of Izzet Chronarch which is great for decks that have multiple options. The former can be quite powerful and the latter turns Kairi into at least a 2:1 if it didn't trade with a dork or take up a pinpoint removal spell. That really counts at the kitchen table.!
#7. (#19 Overall). Scrap Welder
This latest set fixed two cards that are broken in casual play, including Tinker and now a fixed Goblin Welder, arguably the most powerful 1-drop Red creature in history. This Welder is bigger and a 3/3 for three mana. Then you can sacrifice an artifact and recur one from your graveyard. However, unlike how the Goblin Welder would turn Sol Rings and Treasure tokens into previously sacrificed Wurmcoil Engines and other problems, this one cannot go up in mana cost. You can stay the same cost or go down. You could sacrifice a Duplicant for a Wurmcoil Engine, they are both 6-drops. Love it a lot here!
#6. (#18 Overall). Invoke the Winds
The Invoke cycle is pretty good at five mana for casual play, and this one will steal an opposing dork or artifact and untap it. It's just one more mana than Control Magic and cannot be answered with Naturalizes. Its heavy Blue cost means it can be played in mono-Blue, and it's easier in Commander than other formats with Arcane Signet, Command Tower and Commander's Sphere frumping around. I wouldn't run this cycle outside of a two-color brew. This is making the cut into my Type Four stack!
Top Five Time Baby!
#5. (#17 Overall). Spirited Companion
Everyone's favorite little pupper is this top-scoring common, White card, and second highest-scoring 2-drop. This Elvish Visionary (in 19,007 decks over at EDHREC.com) for White could really attack it's % (4% of Green decks). White is starving for card advantage, and this is not just a 2-drop 1/1 Dog that cantrips but is also an enchantment and has all of those synergies as well with cards like Selesnya Enchantress builds around Enchantress's Presence and Orzhov Enchantments around a certain experience counter leader (Daxos the Returned) as well as Bant and Azorius Blink brews. Another Dog hit last week's list! This Dog is heading to a Commander-loving family that loves it and really wants to give it a nice home! Let playtime commence!
#4. (#16 Overall). Blade of the Oni
Our highest-scoring Black card and equipment is this fun 2-mana 3/1 with menace. This is one of the Creature Equipment dorks that debuted in this set and we'll likely see again. The Blade is already a powerful, on-curve, 3/1 with menace for two mana which is hard to block in the early game. Then once a foe has two dorks online to block, you can equip/reconfigure for four mana and then that dork becomes a 5/5 with menace which is likely to win more battles. When the equipped dork trades with one or two blockers, you get this back, and you can swing again with it on a newly open board. Repeat until the Blade is answered with removal. It's very strong for the cost and ability.
#3. (#15 Overall). Tamiyo, Compleated Sage
I am sad that everyone's favorite Moon Sage joined the dark side. But this is a pretty cool planeswalker in the Simic colors. It can be a 4-drop or a 5-drop, and it fixes Phyrexian mana by lowering its starting loyaty, which you don't want at the multiplayer table or Commander where a planeswalker can be attacked three times for each turn in a four-player game. It's pretty good, as it fixes one of the most broken abilities of all time, Phyrexian mana, that traded cheaper spells for life that no one cared about, and despite only being on a small number of cards became a big impact on various formats some of which were banned.
Check out the fixed Tamiyo. As you can see, you can +1 her to tap an opposing dork or artifact and it skips an untap step, which is nice and will let you force a foe to cast another dork to get past it. I love her -X to exile and copy a mana cost permanent card from your graveyard which also wants her to be bigger in size for better flexibility. Her -7 makes a legendary artifact, not an emblem, and can be answered so I am not a fan of it that much. She's fine and I think she's the third best planeswalker in the set for casual land.
#2. (#14 Overall). Mirror Box
Hello happy legendary dork decks. Wow, do I have the 3-drop for you! And these things are all over Commander, there are 3,272 Legendary-Matters brews over at EDHREC.com in tons of different color combinations. Sisay, Weatherlight Captain is the most popular leader of this archetype, and I like that option. This colorless tool will fit into any deck you have. Your legend rule won't apply, which is meaningless in the default casual format Commander since it's one-of save for basics and cards like Shadowborn Apostle. That drops it on my list to today, but you can still run it in formats like Standard, Modern and Five Color.
I really like it in a Standard or Five Color Shrine deck where you can run more than one Shrine at a time, like Honden of the Seeing Winds. It's also a nice Anthem for your legendary stuff that pumps them +1/+1 each, which is much better in Commander. Each nontoken dork gets +1/+1 for each dork with the same name and that will break Commander brews built around the aforementioned Shadowborn Apostle and similar cards like Relentless Rats. It's really strong for kitchen table play!
#1. (#13 Overall). Tezzeret, Betrayer of Flesh
Our highest-scoring card today is this new version of Tezzeret. Your first mana activation for an artifact each turn is reduced by two, and that works on your foe's turns as well which ramps up with more foes in multiplayer. He'll make one mana with Grim Monolith and two with Basalt Monolith per turn. That's why I think he's the second best 'walker, because that can save you a ton of mana in a dedicated artifact deck. His +1 to draw two cards and then discard one artifact or two cards is great card flow as he is a double Looter in a normal build and card draw in artifact ones with just a four cost. His -2 to turn an artifact into an 4/4 dork forever, unless it's a Vehicle in which case it just has its base stats is pretty good. I also love that -6 to emblem and turn tapping artifacts into cards drawn which really works well with his static ability. He's worth my top spot!
And there we go! What did you think of my second list of Top Ten Cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty? Anything that I missed or got in the wrong order? Just let me know in the comments below!