Hello folks! The spoilers are all done, and we now have a full list of all of the cards that are hitting the streets as part of the Eldritch Moon set! This is where Emrakul arrives and warps the numerous people and monsters of the plane into its own Eldrazi minions. It’s corrupting them, and turning the entire plane rather rapidly to its own personal  . . . treehouse.

So Emrakul is the big bad, and has been behind the madness and craziness as well as the full turn to Eldrazi Horrors. Are you ready for this?

So I’ve gone through the full spoiler and grabbed ten cards I think are going to be the best for casual Magic. This is not a list about limited powerhouses or Standard Stalwarts. Nope. It’s a list for things like Commander, multiplayer, and other kitchen table formats.

Luckily, in formats like that, we have a ton of cards to compare these against; thus, we get a good chance to contrast these cards with others rocking the block. Take a card like Incendiary Flow. I can compare it to cards like Volcanic Hammer or Incinerate. It’s basically a sorcery speed Incinerate that exiles the creature instead of preventing regeneration. I know that sorcery speed burn that’s cheap, unscaleable, and without an option for card advantage (like Fireball, Firebolt, and Pyrotechnics) doesn’t tend to get played much. So Incendiary Flow won’t be a huge addition at the table. (Now a quick caveat — every card can make an impact at the kitchen tables. It’s the kitchen freakin’ table! But I think the point stands nonetheless.)

So with that in mind, what’s new? What’s powerful? What’s going to be a major player moving forward?

10. Eldritch Evolution

Sacrifice a creature. It’s not like Green doesn’t have a bunch of spare creatures anyway, right? Search your library for a creature that’s with a converted mana cost up to two greater than the sacrificed one. Drop it. Exile your Evolution. Now, in a lot of ways, that’s better than Natural Selection. It costs just 3 mana to Natural Selection’s 4, and there aren’t any Green restrictions on it. But Green often sacrificed something on the third turn (with a mana accelerant) into a giant Green beater that wins the game. This can’t do that. You can’t turn Wall of Roots into Verdant Force, Woodfall Primus or something similar. Sorry. But you can sacrifice stuff for something bigger by up to two cost. And you can play around with it easily enough. The sheer flexibility, cheap cost, and more makes this worth it as a useful addition to your decks.

9. Ironclad Slayer

I blame Tempest. Just two sets earlier, we had the concept of a creature with an enters-the-battlefield trigger hit the collective Magic consciousness, and it was like a design-bomb just blew up player’s minds. We played the first cards from this era, Uktabi Orangutan, Nekrataal, Man-o'-War and friends very heavily. And then Tempest hit, and it brought the first of the flexible and useful recursive creatures with this effect in Gravedigger. By the end of the block we’d have Anarchist, Scrivener, and such all mucking about. You can return artifacts or enchantments. It’s good stuff. And today, from Sanctum Guardian to Custodi Squire, there’s a ton of options out there. But the Slayer is different than a lot of those. First, it returns either an aura or equipment. Both of those are very specific, but they work in different White-centric builds. Take Commander as a good example. You could have a White aura-centric deck built around Zur the Enchanter, Bruna, Light of Alabaster, Uril, the Miststalker, Daxos the Returned, or Krond the Dawn-Clad. Meanwhile, your equipment-loving Slayer works with Stoneforge Mystic in equipment loving shells. So you have both. But the Slayer is not a mid-cost-priced little 2/2 or 2/1 or something for 4 or 5 mana. Nope! It’s a 3/2 on the third turn. You get a powerful, cheap, on-curve threat, who also gets you the goods either then, or later on. That makes the Ironclad Slayer feel a little different to me. And . . . 

8. Sigarda’s Aid

 . . . As I just mentioned above, the large amount of decks that are either equipment or aura heavy is pretty significant. This will likely be like Hardened Scales. Hardened Scales is no Doubling Season, but’s solid, consistent, and playable on the first turn when folks are often doing very little. This is the same. Drop it right now. Until someone takes it out, you can drop any aura or equipment as though it has flash, so you can respond to stuff. Flash out Unquestioned Authority to give a creature pro creatures if someone is about to kill it with a Royal Assassin or in combat. Flash out Lightning Greaves and equip it immediately to give a creature shroud and protect it from a removal spell. Flash out Skullclamp and equip it on something for free that is about to die to a Wrath of God. You get the idea. Free equips, and flash are downright insane when you layer them together on a 1-drop. (Ironically, Sigarda’s Aid works, really, really well in a Bruna deck).

7. Smoldering Werewolf

I love this card as a very interesting variant on creatures like Flametongue Kavu, Ghitu Slinger, Fire Imp, and such. You invest 4 mana, and the result is a 3/2 beater, slightly smaller than FTK. You also can shoot two creatures for one damage each, which gives you the potential to take out some smaller dorks. It comes down later enough that you can maximize the damage splitting and have more potential targets, like Birds of Paradise, Looter il-Kor, and stuff like that. So it can, at times, kill two creatures. It’s great for layering damage to finish stuff off, and you can play with the various engines and creatures with fun enters-the-battlefield tricks. Oh, and don’t forget that when you have the 6 mana, you can flip this guy to a 6/4 Eldrazi threat that does two damage to a player or creature when it attacks. That’s a major upgrade. The potential to get even more value from the Werewolf is incredible, and I can’t wait to start dropping Werewolves on Fire.

There are a variety of these cards that come down strong and have a quick value for the table. Then later, when you have the mana, you can flip them to a major threat. This double-option is really great, and cards like Kessig Prowler, a solid Savannah Lions, into something more or a mana-making Ulvenwald Captive are all going to prove really powerful. But my favorite of the ones left is Conduit of Storms. Bring it out on turn three. Swing on four, make that mana, spend five to flip. You’ve now got a 5/4 that makes 2 mana each swing from here on out. Not bad.

6. Tamiyo, Field Researcher

4 mana for a four loyalty planeswalker that can really own the board is something highly useful moving forward. Take a look under the hood — Her first +1 ability is just awesome. The next time two target creatures would deal damage, you draw a card. And this lasts for a turn, so there are two ways to use it. Offensively, before you attack, to draw some cards from creatures that are about to hit. Or defensively. Use her to inspire two opposing creatures, and now their controller has to make a tough choice on their turn. Attack you and let you draw some cards? Attack Tamiyo and do the same? Attack another player for cards for you? Or just let them stay back for a turn so no one else is drawing cards? That’s a powerful problem you are giving them. And then you get her second ability to lock two annoying cards down for a spell, including one additional turn after you just tapped them. Slow tap. So you get a powerful multiplayer friendly card drawing option, and some useful tapping of problems like opposing creatures. And note that her stuff works in tandem. Tap down some blockers for a few turns, swing. Next turn swing with her +1 giving you two extra cards. So, she’s quality. The only thing keeping a good Moonfolk down is that she’s three colors, and that’s hard for some formats (Commander) or folks to easily run.

Meanwhile . . . 

5. Liliana, the Last Hope

This is a 3-drop in just black, so Liliana is easier to cast both by color and by mana. And you know what? She can give you card advantage through both abilities which is key to card-advantage sensitive formats like Commander and/or multiplayer. The first will Weakness a creature for -2/-1. You certainly can’t argue with that on a 3-drop that’s hitting the table right around the time that that’ll kill stuff or shrink them for a full turn. And the second ability will let you mill yourself of two cards and Raise Dead to bring back the best creature from your graveyard to your hand. Repeatable Weakness and Raise Dead effects are really strong in casual land, especially when Liliana, the Last Hope hits the table early on. So you’ve got something here.

4. Deploy the Gatewatch

There’s not a lot here to be said. Planeswalkers are awesome. The chance to grab two and toss them into play for one card is great. You’ll usually hit one for sure, especially in decks that have a good number of them in the deck. Note that the flip-walkers from Magic Origins, like Liliana, Heretical Healer, are not planeswalkers on the side that mattes, so they can’t be Deployed. But that’s all right, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of other options to use and abuse.

All right, top three time!

3. Thalia’s Lancers

There are a lot of legendary creatures out there in casual land to fetch up. As a 4/4 first strike 5-drop with a solid body for the cost, this is not some cheap little small fry that plays well with others either. It’s pertinent in the red zone. It lets you swing for some stuff. And it’s got a great tutoring effect for the right legendary card (like Kor Haven or Gisela, the Broken Blade). You’ve got the power. And can you imagine how insane this thing must be eating a flicker diet? Wow!

2. Stromkirk Occultist

In my Top Ten Cards from Shadows overInnistrad article, I named Sin Prodder the best card in the set. (Check it out here). I (mostly) called that, because it’s still one of the top five or ten cards in the set after a lot of play (although some cards, post play, I’d move around). It’s been great. And you want to know something? This is even better!As someone who still plays and gets a ton of value from Prophetic Flamespeaker, this is an awesome 3-drop. You get a 3/2 for your investment, which is great. Our good Vampire has trample, so it can smash away. It has a cheap cost instead of a harder one. Oh, and whenever you smash someone, you get to run the whole Red “Exile the top card of your library and play it this turn too if it works.” So you get pseudo-card drawing, on a 3-mana 3/2 trampler. What’s not to love? That it’s going to win games too quickly?

1. Splendid Reclamation

As someone who has regularly played and extolled the virtues of Planar Birth, this is an awesome card. It puts all of those lands from your graveyard right back on the battlefield where they belong. And this plays into a lot of archetypes as well. If you have a bit of a self-milling theme, this works. Discard theme? This works! What about a sacrifice theme? This works! Do you have a bunch of fetch lands? This works! Is land destruction a thing in your metagame? This works! Playing mass land destruction yourself? This works! The simple fact is that this card works in so many Green-centric builds and shells that it’s going to be a major star of casual tables moving forward. Because, at the end of the day, it just works.

You might have some questions about some cards such as where is “What about Emrakul herself?” Well the cast trigger for a Mindslaver is great! But giving them an extra turn after? I’m not sold. You are Time Walking them. Sure, you can screw them up, but then they are the first one to recover from it. Normally post-Mindslaver, they are all tapped out, they have lost as many cards as possible, they attacked poorly, etc. But here, they have untapped, drawn a card, and given them a round to recover before the rest of the team takes their turns. That’s not what you want from a Mindslaver. So, nah. I’d need to be convinced in play that Emrakul is still good enough with the weakened Mindslaver action.

And there we go!

So which cards on this list are you most looking forward to grabbing? Anything that I missed?

Are you ready to get your Moon on?