Look out! It's me on Dynasty!

Neon Dynasty, you see.

It was a little over a year ago that the great Cyberpunk 2077 marketing dovetail failed on arrival, and you know what that means: It's roughly time for the forced, clumsy new Magic set that was supposed to barnacle off it to come out!

Enough cynicism. An experienced Magic goober is weighing in on the new card previews. Someone get the lights.

This is an insane Magic card. Buy forty. Give them out at Halloween this year. The neighborhood will love you.

Another uncommon that will probably do godawful things to unsuspecting players that just wanted to attack and block. It reeks of combo enabling and it's very cheap. Its fragility largely won't matter if you can win immediately with something degenerate and development slippery.

Real talk, though:

Its name sucks. Construct is now way too common of a creature type to be sticking in card names. This reads with as much excitement as something like "Climbing Goblin" or "Accounting Elf." Use a synonym and take a slightly shorter lunch next time, Creative.

Everything about the kind of things this card will do in Commander annoys me. Cool tricks will emerge, but I think most of the archetypes that want this gimmick will homogenize toward most of the same stuff. Hopefully it'll pass quickly and be forgotten lest it go into the dubious and always fluid cultural awareness list of commanders everyone wish would stop being played anywhere ever.

This, on the other hand, is the kind of card that seems way too reasonable on rate to scare anyone into hate. This is a fair player's commander, and I'm glad this inevitable card design has finally come to pass in print. I expect that abilities like mentor that are local to recent cards are the absolute floor on this effect. I'd probably start with Inferno Titan and get hungrier from there.

Was "Big Huge Gun" already copyrighted? What has the release schedule done to our game?! Why can't they name cards anymore?!

As far as evaluating it as a game piece, I'm unable to do that. I did not read the card.

...

Cough.

Most of the time, Open the Vaults was engineered to be game-winning for the caster, and unless there was some kind of amazingly awesome mirror match going on, it was functionally an asymmetrical effect. Of course, that was competitive Magic, not Commander, which has a very different dynamic when it comes to cards like this. Either way, I find the mana costing kind of baffling, even with the set's theme of costing rares like this. It sure puts Replenish into perspective, doesn't it?

Member?

As far as mythics go, this is pretty inoffensive. It's not near peak Lotus Cobra, but I imagine there will be some games the damned thing just runs away with because it got to attack. If you're not okay with losing to a 3-drop that got to attack and is now snowballing the game away, Magic probably isn't for you anyway.

I expect to be called by this card's name at least thrice by the end of summer.

I haven't read what other people have said about this, but I'm going to assume it's hyped everywhere. This is a really significant card for every format it's legal in, and I expect it to continue to push the trend of the land card type becoming a bigger and bigger defining post of Legacy and Vintage. At least lands in those formats tend to be really affordable and accessible.

When every color gets an effect it loses a lot of its potential meaning. Elvish Visionary was a key piece of one of the most reliable creature combo strategies ever. I don't think using commons to increase velocity across every conceivable strategy is a great way to increase the experience of player agency in games, which feels a little too low at times lately anyway.

Two things jump out at me. First, her non-emblem gets blown right up. The other thing is that although you can do some build-around work with her second ability, it comes off as contributing an arbitrary "bunch of creature stuff" that may or may not do absolutely anything. If all the best Blue staples on Magic Arena this upcoming season end up being noncreature in nature, Tamiyo is going to ride the bench.

I don't think this is a format breaker. I imagine it'll do fun stuff in Commander but won't shake anything competitive to its core without some really pushed direct synergy available.

Tamiyo is where I'd be looking to go for fun, not to tame a format to my will.

Power to whatever purpose this serves, but I'll note that it doesn't feel like a Goblin. I wonder how relevant making redundant midgame Aether Vials free might be. My guess is not very.

I have mythic cycle fatigue, but these are still awesome. Giving big win conditions some modality is a great way to engage players in spots where sometimes the card seems like it's doing all the work for you. I hope people aren't sick of these by week three because they're going to be popular.

Shared purpose is another term for love. This isn't related to Magic, but it's pretty so I said it.

I'm not a Shrine person, but they have my full support.

Cybermagic 2022

All told, this set has several aspects that excite me in ways that were absent from other recent releases. There's still a bit too much word salad for little gain, and I am concerned it took nearly two decades to get to the obvious way equipment should've worked to begin with; however, the set does feel cohesive and less cluttered than other off-the-rails mechanical messes like Ikoria and Kaldheim. This usually results in players feeling like they're getting more meaningful play. If the pushed cards can stay interesting in competitive while being fun in casual and we get a smooth draft experience, this could be the best mainline Magic release in years.

(~_^)

The Rascal

The Indestructible Danny West