Set reviews done by talented, witty pros who understand card valuation inside and out can be very interesting. Set reviews done by talented, witty casual players aren’t as helpful or interesting. Rather than give you a set review, I thought I’d pick a few of the cards that appealed to me. Most of my picks are colored by my love of multiplayer, so you can expect these cards to perform better with multiple opponents. These thirteen cards are my own little package of fun. I will name it George, and I will hug it, and pet it, and squeeze it, and pat it, and pet it, and rub it, and caress it . . .

I built a three-colored Ally deck during Zendikar block that would love to take advantage of Cathars' Crusade. The deck involved several red, white and blue Allies providing a variety of bonuses to the other Allies already in play. After a couple of rounds of combat, I usually needed to play a Wrath effect to balance out the table. The difference was that I would have Cauldron of Souls in play. I’d select all of my Allies, and they would all hit the graveyard, then return to play at the same time, giving each other bonuses all over the place.

Now add in Cathars' Crusade . . . mmm.

The reason I’m excited about this particular card for multiplayer is the ability to pick any target. Imagine a game with the black mage dominating the board. Neither you nor the green mage can break through the wall of black creatures. You convince the green mage to attack you (that shouldn’t be too hard to do), and then you use Divine Deflection to hit the black mage directly. This card allows you to kill protection-from-red creatures with a red direct damage spell or a red creature. When I picture Divine Deflection in action, I see a game of dodge ball in which the threatening player makes a quick pass to a teammate who has a free shot at the opponent who is well defended against the wrong guy. Oh yeah!

I also recommend you talk to your play group and decide right away how far someone can go with putting it in his hand before it is too late. Tournament play may demand that you declare it before it touches the other cards in your hand, but are you really going to play that hard-assed with your friends? On the other hand, you do want to play somewhat close to the spirit of the card, so work it out with your friends beforehand. If you wait for it to happen, there will be some hard feelings that first time around.

I shouldn’t be so quick to disregard the first ability either. Just yesterday, I watched an Ajani Vengeant lock down three different cards at three different times when watching them untap would have been disastrous for the board. I’m confident that you can always find something worthwhile that needs to be kept out of commission among the multiple opponents in your game as well.

This is the part of the article where I would go through the black cards, but I’m confident that Daryl Bockett will examine them with a better eye than I would. Rather than looking at any particular card, instead I’ll choose to give out a general warning: You do not want to be trying to make the one-creature-alone theme try to work in multiplayer. We see a number of black creatures receive nice bonuses if they are the only ones doing the work. There are several cards that offer bonuses if you only have one creature. My question for you is: When you attack with that creature, how are you protecting yourself?

You can try to make your creatures all have flash, or you can jump through a variety of other hoops, but generally, I think you are going to be better off to just use better creatures and more of them. It is likely that Wizards is just throwing a bone to the mono-black control players at various tournaments. Don’t be sucked into this little bit of hype. There are plenty of other cool things going on in this set that will work a lot better in multiplayer than this.

Ideally, I want to swap him for one of my opponents’ creatures! Gauntlets of Chaos, Chromeshell Crab, Legerdemain, Puca's Mischief, and Spawnbroker are some of the cards I’d love to pair with this thing. Take one of the opponents’ creatures for the Archwing Dragon, then get the Dragon back in hand at the end of the turn so you can do it again next turn! Look, I want the other blue and red mages to not steal my stuff; I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it!

On top of these somewhat limited uses, a surprise 4/4 with flying that is constantly coming back to your hand is hard to get rid of and will be more useful than you realize.

By the way, check out the creature type line. Remember Lorwyn’s Elemental theme? Flamekin Harbinger can help you find Malignus, and Incandescent Soulstoke can make him a little bigger and a little more hasty. I’m sure you can come up with some way to bring him out of the graveyard if you really need to hit with him repeatedly.

While I suppose you could simply add this card to whatever theme decks you already have built, I think a better way to go is to treat it as you would a card with miracle. You are going to want to manipulate your library so the card you are looking for is right on (Sensei’s Divining) top. With Descendants' Path, you can set it up so you are getting off-colored Elementals for free. Multicolored Dragons and Angels are easily within your reach. Worldly Tutor and Momir Vig, Simic Visionary will both help put the creature you are looking for on top of your library. Congregation at Dawn will set up the next three creatures.

Of the combinations I’ve considered, Nest Invader with a Worldly Tutor should lead your playgroup into insanity by turn four or so.

The cards have the same casting costs and get rid of stuff. The real question is what you are looking to get out of the card. If you want a 6-mana, problem-solved instant, Desert Twister is for you. If you are willing to take your chances with creatures and planeswalkers, Rain of Thorns is the way to go. It may sound like I’m belittling Rain of Thorns, but that isn’t the case at all. In multiplayer games, it is a rare game when you won’t be destroying three things with this card. Getting rid of a Sword of X and Y, a Descendants' Path, and someone’s Cavern of Souls with just one card is awesome. The sorcery limitation is there, but when you are playing green, you probably aren’t looking to sit on 6 mana every turn.

The fight mechanic is a nice way for green to even the playing field against creatures with flying or shadow. The real problem is that you are only dealing as much damage as the power on your creature. Sometimes, there is a particularly big creature on the board, and you find you just can’t do enough, and on top of that, your creature will die. If there was just some way for your creature to do twice as much damage and only take half as much damage . . .

Gisela is a true multiplayer powerhouse. Doubling damage happens all over, even if you aren’t involved. When a card says that you take half the damage but everyone else takes double, many opponents are not going to realize until the first attack step that, even if he attacks someone other than you, all the damage is doubled. Once everyone starts to realize that, many of those players will focus on each other, figuring the damage will at least be even. Besides, attacking you while you have a 5/5 first strike that doubles its damage is pretty tough to hit at all; forget about doing 10 damage to her trying to kill her. There are far easier ways to deal with creatures like this that doesn’t have hexproof, shroud, protection, and so on.

In multiplayer, this means that you can only do your flash hijinks on one of your opponents’ turns. If you are just looking to use this as a way to cast your creatures at the end of your opponent’s turn before yours, this is fine, but otherwise, it may turn into an annoying limitation.

Most players I have seen using the Orrery are trying to create annoying combos using a sorceries at instant speed. Alchemist's Refuge will let you do that, but it is going to cost you 3 extra mana to make that happen, and speaking of limitation, they have to be blue and green instead of colorless. While I like the Refuge and will probably throw it into a few decks, I suspect we will find it to be a poor man’s substitute for the Orrery.¹

If you are looking at this for the haste it offers, look at your creatures and ask yourself if you would pay 3 extra mana for the same creature with haste. Also consider that on turn seven, you are going to be playing a creature that everyone else was playing three turns ago because you are using up 3 of your mana to cast it. Instead of a Titan, you are getting a 4/4 that is a 6/4 with haste and vigilance for one turn. Is that what you want?

On the other hand, the right deck can make really good use of those abilities, even occasionally granting them to an opponent who could use some help defending against a big ugly or just needs some encouragement to go after a common foe.

The best part about this card is that it is only going to become better. Magic 2013 has Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker in it, suggesting there is a good chance there will be other gold cards in the core set. Return to Ravnica will certainly be another set filled with gold cards, which will make this card even more valuable. I intend to acquire as many of these as I can lay my hands on.

Bruce Richard

¹ I should note that this card is there to enable a broken combo, and I am no Johnny. Talk to Brandon Isleib, and you may get a very different take on the card than what I am giving you.