Hello fans of new sets and spoilers and Magic and D&D! Boy, do we have the crossover to end crossovers with this set! Today I want to take a looksee at my Top Ten cards from the overly long named D&D: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Wow that's long!
To make my list these cards must be the best of the best of the best for casual land. If it's a likely hit for Standard or Modern but a swing and a miss for formats like Commander and multiplayer, then it's not here!
Let's look at my Top Ten!
Honorable Mention (11). Demilich
If I had a magic time machine and could make one change to the game, I'd make Liches Skeletons, not Zombies, for flavor purposes, and I'm glad to see that Demilich at least plays into that canon nicely enough. This 4-drop is a 4/3, which is on curve for Blue and you can reduce its cost if you've cast instants and sorceries this turn. Might I suggest Opt or Brainstorm or Gitaxian Probe? Then you can swing and net that trigger to exile an instant/sorcery from your graveyard and copy it. Pretty good right? Is Demilich in your graveyard? No problem! You can exile four instants and or sorceries from said graveyard and cast it. It's pretty saucy right? I love it with Murktide Regent who loves to see those two types exiled.
10. Zariel, Archduke of Avernus
Why is Zariel here? Great question! One of my favorite multiplayer planeswalkers of all time is Sarkhan Vol for his +1 to haste and +1/+1 your team. Zariel does just one worse with +1/+0 and haste for her +1 ability for one less Green mana and four mana total. It's awesome! Haste is underrated in Commander and similar formats since sweeping removal is so rife and that's usually sorcery speed. If you drop a creature without haste, you give them a turn to Day of Judgment. But with it? You get in a free punch before their removal comes online. I adore her for the kitchen table. And don't sleep on her 0 to make a 1/1 Red Devil either to protect her from attackers looking her way. She's a great Red only Sarkhan Vol option! Enjoy her!
9. Old Gnawbone
Our first of three Mono-Green cards in our countdown is this legendary Dragon. Why does the convention make us capitalize creature types like "Dragon" and artifact type like "Treasure," but not "creature" or "legendary?" Weird, right? Check out this Dragon! As you deal combat damage to a player you make that many Treasures! That's a lot of ramping in one card! It's legendary so it's eligible for an EDH brew, and it already has evasion to fly over those ground pounders. Just add trample to ensure it hits even if blocked!
8. Xanathar, Guild Kingpin
Hello fans of Beholders! I wish that they had templated Beholders as "Eyes," like Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore and Evil Eye of Urborg which already look like Beholders. This is our only charting gold card on today's countdown! I adore it! On your upkeep you'll trigger this and then the targeted opponent cannot cast things on your turn! Pretty good, right? It's very strong in a duel. It's great as a Commander and our own Jason Alt already built a deck around it. Let's just say that the writers' room wasn't surprised when he called it. It's all right, I have my awesome Volo deck! After it triggers in your upkeep, you can look at the top card of their library and you can cast it with your mana as though it were mana of any color, so if you flip over Lightning Bolt you can tap an Island and cast it. I really enjoy the power of this card!
7. Ellywick Tumblestrum
Let's be honest. Ellywick will only be as good as her +1 to venture into a Dungeon will be. I suspect it'll be really good as you can choose the best Dungeon for the moment and venture therein. There are just three dungeons (right now) but with forking paths that leaves a lot of options in them at various times of the game. You can choose the right path for your deck or the battlefield or lack of anything happening. From scrying to gaining life to drawing cards to making Goblin tokens, there is a deep power to the dungeon crawling game. She's a solid option for the dungeoneers among you!
6. Circle of Dreams Druid
Our final Green card is this fun Elf Druid! It's a 3-drop 2/1 and it taps for mana equal to your creature count, including itself, so it always taps for at least one even if it's on a naked board. It can tap for a lot of mana! It's basically Gaea's Cradle on a 3-drop creature. It's very likely, in the right deck, to be mana positive and tap for more than the mana it took to drop it. I love the Elf Druid a lot in casual town!
Time for my top 5!
5. Wish
Wish is not on this list if you are playing Commander, since it doesn't actually function in that format. In other kitchen table formats this would be the top card in the set, since it adds a Wish effect to Red that can be used for any card unlike the restrictions of Living Wish or Golden Wish, not to mention the massive life loss of Death Wish. Let's average those potential rankings and give it my #5 spot, okay? You just have to play the card this turn and then you are good to go, Idaho! I adore it in casual town where you can get the perfect answer to a problem and the perfect problem for a board state. Take, as a good example, removal. Suppose something is dominating the board, like a nasty Stasis, that you need to destroy. Now you can get the perfect enchantment removal spell. Don't get Disenchant! Get Aura Blast! It's the same mana cost, destroys any enchantment, and draws you a card! That's the power of Wish effects. The more colors you run the better Wish is. Note that you can get any land and then drop it since it says you can "play" the card not "cast" it. Awesome!
4. Lolth, Spider Queen
Our highest-charting planeswalker is this bad lady. She's also our second highest charting Black card. Check her out! As your stuff dies, which is pretty common, you'll load her up with loyalty counters! Note that it is missing the word "nontoken," so it also includes tokens dying. And then? You'll drop her and then 0 for a lost life and a card which is very good. Then you can -3 her and make two 2/1 reach menace Spiders, which is pretty good as well. That works very well with the massive loyalty gain from the death-ery. She's a great 5-drop and plays well into card flow and into shells like Orzhov tokens and various Aristocrat builds that seek to self-sacrifice a lot. I think she's the best planeswalker in the set, how about you?
3. Tasha's Hideous Laughter
Wow. Why is this card #3 in the set? It's just a mill card, right? Wrong! First, it mills each opponent, whereas most cards that mill are target player, like Glimpse the Unthinkable. This also does something else pretty nasty; did you notice? Yup! It exiles the cards! Good catch, reader. That means if you are casting your mill win cons against a graveyard literate deck, which is very common in Commander and other kitchen table formats, that the milled stuff won't hit the graveyard or trigger their Syr Konrad, the Grim.
2. Oswald Fiddlebender
Our penultimate card is this bad boy! Check it out! It's a great 2-drop 2/2 that can block or swing and grab a piece of equipment. Tap a mana and him to sacrifice an artifact and fetch one that's one mana more. Sacrifice a Treasure, Clue, or Food for a 1-drop and then sacrifice that 1-drop for a 2-drop, and so on. This is a Birthing Pod for artifacts! It's very powerful on a cheaper 2-drop but it's more fragile as creatures are easier to answer than artifacts. It's legendary so you can build around it, and its White's answer to Goblin Welder effects which tap to sacrifice an artifact to recur one.
1. Asmodeus the Archfiend
Hello fans of a dialed back Griselbrand! This rare is just nasty at the kitchen table! As you draw cards, you exile them face down instead, and then you can return everything set aside for a Black mana and a life lost for each card. In Commander that's off a 40-life total, so that's a pretty good rate. It's also legendary, so you can run this as a powerful leader of your deck. Then you can spend three and draw 7 cards, exiled by his effect, then spend another one and pay 7 life to draw them from exile. Result? You spent four Black mana and drew 7 cards for 7 life. Nasty! You can also activate the draw 7 a few times, and then sacrifice it (or destroy it) at instant speed and draw 7 or 14 cards without any life lost! This Devil God is just downright wrong. Nothing, other than Wish, is near it, and then only in the right circumstances.
And there you go! Let's do this again next week shall we? What did you think of my list? Anything I missed? Just let me know!