One thing I'm happy to announce before we get into the meat and potatoes of M21 is that the Freshly Brewed podcast is back! This was a podcast I once did with Ali Aintrazi (who I still love to death), but now will be doing with my buddy Rob Castillo. You may know Rob both from his appearances on my stream, and also the set reviews we do on Twitch and YouTube for each set (of which we will certainly do for M21). You can find Freshly Brewed at this link, wherever you find podcasts, or down at the bottom of the article in my signature!

Well, not even three weeks after Ikoria was released in paper, M21 previews have begun. I know you guys are probably already exhausted from having played likely zero paper games with Ikoria, but it's time for another set! The wheels of progress must turn!

In all seriousness, I know Covid-19 has had a profound effect on production and our ability to play with physical Magic cards, but are there not just one or two too many sets? And Double Masters is releasing on August 7th, so not even two months from now! Conversely, I am always one to advocate that not every product is for you, and having more options or reprints is a good thing, so in all likelihood, you don't actually have to purchase Double Masters if you're solely a Standard player. Even with that being said, however, good lord Standard-legal sets are releasing quickly. Here's hoping it's just a Covid thing.

With my release woes out of the way, let's take a look at some of the gems that have been spoiled thus far, not the least of which is Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.

Your New Favorite Top End

Of course, the amount of ramp in the format is definitely going to be a barometer of how strong Ugin will be, and considering we have cards like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Nissa, Who Shakes the World, I imagine the eight-mana planeswalker will fit in just fine. I'm just hoping it doesn't become a problem. A card like Ugin (or Ulamog, for that matter) is never the card you ban when push comes to shove. It also isn't a creature or a card that can be cast at instant speed, so we don't have to worry about any of the cards we talked about last week, like Lukka, Winota, or Wilderness Reclamation.

Then again, we do have things like Eat to Extinction, Murderous Rider, Dirge Bat, and Bedevil, to name a few options for removing planeswalkers. We even have Banishing Light again, thanks to Theros Beyond Death. Truth be told, there are a lot of ways to deal with planeswalkers in the current Standard format, but in every case, someone is definitely getting a Eugene activation off first.

Is Grim Tutor Scary?

Grim Tutor is basically the card version of playing your companion now, and think of how badly that change affected companions. There aren't a ton of situations in Standard where you have the luxury of taking an entire turn off (the way you would by putting a companion in your hand) simply to go find another card. Unless there's some combo deck in Standard that requires you to have specific pieces, I don't see this card really making an impact. The three life lost just makes it even worse!

The thing about Standard is 1) that you typically always want to be moving forward on your turns; you always want to be applying pressure to the board or advancing your position, and 2) most decks have a lot of ubiquity to them. What I mean by that is that you have a lot of creatures, or removal spells, or planeswalkers, that all kind of do similar things. This means that taking a turn off and paying three mana to go find a Nissa, Who Shakes the World can frequently be as good as drawing a Casualties of War, or a Tamiyo, Collector of Tales, or a Hydroid Krasis. And typically you don't have time to increase the cost of any of these cards by three life and 3 mana.

Heck, the last tutor that saw any real play was Mastermind's Acquisition, and that was fringe at best. The benefit there being that you could grab a sideboard card for a specific matchup if needed, and the deck in question made a ton of mana.

I'm not saying Grim Tutor won't see any play in Standard, because it very well might (again, in decks that are looking for specific cards); I'm just saying it's nothing to be afraid of.

Baneslayer Angel is Back!

... back in the day, that is.

Unfortunately, until Dream Trawler rotates out of Standard, I doubt Baneslayer will see any real play. At least not in decks. I mean, sure, Baneslayer Angel costs one less mana, and both creatures have flying and lifelink, but that's about where Baneslayer's advantage ends. Being able to give itself hexproof on the fly, while also drawing you an extra card every turn is just too good. Heck, I think Dreamy Boi is one of my least favorite cards in Standard to play against, in fact. It's basically a combination of Baneslayer Angel and Consecrated Sphinx, and sometimes it's attacking for more than five damage a turn. I love Baneslayer Angel, but it's living in a Dream Trawler world right now. Post rotation? Well, we'll see.

One of my big issues with M21 is the speed at which the spoilers are coming out. The previews started on June 5th, and by June 8th there were 40 cards spoiled. That's simply too much information to process, at least for me. There are still cards I haven't read yet, and I feel like I have to keep refreshing the spoiler sites every five minutes. It's all just very overwhelming, and I think it diminishes a lot of the excitement of specific cards when they're immediately overshadowed by other cards that debuted within the same half hour. People were so busy discussing whether Teferi was broken or not (he isn't), that the new Liliana or the new Basri Ket just felt like afterthoughts. These are flagship characters and cards in the set, and we barely have a few hours to discuss or appreciate them before the next 20 cards are unleashed.

Just like with set releases themselves, I worry that spoilers are simply moving too fast. Maybe this is just me though. I'd love to know what you guys think. Are all things Magic moving too quickly? Do we have enough time to appreciate all the new sets and cards as they're being hurled at us? I personally don't think we do, but I also accept that I may be in the minority.

That's all I have for this week. Be sure to check out Freshly Brewed, use promo code FRANK5 for 5% off, and leave a comment down below! Thank you guys so much for reading, I love you, stay safe, and I'll catch you all next week.

#BlackLivesMatter

Frank Lepore

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