Readers!

Since I get so much practice, I feel like I have honed in on a set review format I like. This is the second one in like a month but I know you're champing at the bit to see Core Set 2020 cards in action and I'm excited to write about them. Last time I wrote about 10 cards from Modern Horizons I couldn't wait to use and I was going to do that again. Then I thought that I should do 20 because it's Core Set 2020 and that would be a good gag. Then I thought 20 was a lot. Then I figured I would do 75% of 20 so I could spend some time on cards and not make your eyes glaze over, plus that way it's 2 gags instead of 1. With all that out of the way, let's get started, shall we?

In no particular order, here are 15 cards from Core 2020 I think are going to be great in 75% decks.

Ajani isn't great in every build but White tends to do a good job getting creatures out and you should be able to gain quite a bit of life using his +1. Making Pridemates is cool, also, but the real real I like this so much is that it's a four-mana removal spell if you gain some life. Lots of decks like Karlov, Oloro and Ayli are already focusing on gaining life so adding this to the mix which not only helps gain some life and make some creatures that play well in your deck, you have a four-mana board wipe that doesn't affect your board. This is sort of insane when you think about it, since you don't have to keep Ajani on board and build up loyalty to use the ult, meaning you can windmill this out of nowhere and wipe the board down. This is a really spicy 'walker and with plenty of decks ready to go to slide this into, I could see this doing work right away.

I am on record as being very, very heavily in favor of cards that say "you win the game" and I am having to adjust to the new way these cards are templated going forward. Making someone lose the game doesn't exactly win you the game, but threatening it doesn't make you the archenemy, either. All of a sudden you become the arbiter of who lives and dies at the table, and taking out the person farthest ahead may make you more popular, not less. With plenty of ways to keep your hand size above 7, cheap cantrips, middle-mana utility spells and expensive creatures, Blue decks are already set up to take advantage of this. I could see this in the command zone or the 99. I'd obviously prefer if you won the game, but KOing someone is non-trivial in Blue and I like the way they're using the design space.

Getting mana from creatures is pretty useful and it's something I tend to do a lot in my decks, especially with creatures like Somberwald Sage, Shaman of Forgotten Ways, and Incubation Druid running around. This pairs nicely with a favorite recent card of mine, Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter which can both put counters on creatures and also let them tap for mana. A lot of my decks involve Simic creatures with +1/+1 counters and this card seems perfect for those decks. Elves decks benefit, too, and if you get mana equal to the number of counters like with Gyre Sage, you can even buy a cost reduction on future activations. This is an exciting card and a lot of my Simic decks can jam this in without having to modify the deck at all. Solid!

This is probably the most 75% card in the set. I'm not thrilled by the high mana cost, but this does go right into my Maelstrom Wanderer deck without question. Seven mana is a high cost for a creature, butsix6 is a lot, too, and Deadeye Navigator is playable, and it's REALLY playable with this. Being able to draw cards off of this seems very easy, especially if you're using other means like Vedalken Shackles, Memnarch, or Blatant Thievery. I can't wait to blink this in and out of play and amass my own army of other people's creatures, which is my favorite way to win the game. I keep linking this article, but if you get a chance, read my article about interpreting Sun Tzu to see why I like pilfering their permanents.

It's like Knight of the Reliquary and Weathered Wayfarer had a baby and that baby was... part Werebear? The analogy breaks down a bit but what doesn't break down is how happy I am to see this. Knight of the Reliquary is my favorite Magic card that isn't called Birds of Paradise (odd way to say "second favorite" I guess) so having access to a similar ability in my Simic decks makes me happy. This doesn't go in every deck but Tatyova or the Omnath deck I brewed last week can make use of this right away. Tutoring for Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Strip Mine, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, or even just fixing your colors is powerful, and Ramunap Excavator can take some of the sting out of having to sac a land to fuel his ability. I think this card is very useful and while it's a little too fair to have to tap mana to activate him, I'm still going to play the card in a lot of decks.

This is sneakily a very good tutor. Long-time readers of this column would get the impression that I don't like tutors that much, but if you read my first article on the subject, you'll see I advocated Worldly Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, and Pattern of Rebirth in a Mayael deck - a deck that can put the card you tutored for right into play, no less. The problem, I still feel, is that face-down tutors can obscure what you're doing and make your opponents more hostile and I think toolbox tutors are preferable to second copies of specific cards. I'll admit, the first thing I thought when I saw this card was that it was a way to make Tooth and Nail a little easier to interact with, but I think this is more than that. This could be a true toolbox tutor and allow you to have a way to get synergistic combo pieces like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror-Breaker and Acidic Slime rather than Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts in matches where your opponents couldn't handle a "fair" combo like that, or wrap the game up when doing so was either fair or necessary. Philosophically, the 75% ethos prefers toolboxes to second copies, face-up to face-down tutors and really, really expensive tutors to one or two mana ones. This checks all of the boxes. Does that make this card too bad to be played in Commander? I don't know. Five mana is a lot, but it's instant-speed which is good and it also lets players interact with the cards you tutor for. Tooth and Nail is still way better, but this, employed differently, is a nice spin on Worldly Tutor (and it puts the cards in your hand) and I think in a world full of Ilhargs and Sneak Attacks, this could be a very fair card that packs a wallop.

Remember, this copies the spell twice which means three total copies. It only copies your spells, which is a knock against it, but when you look at spells that are still affordable with a four mana, 1-card kicker attached to them, you can see how brutal this has potential to be. Furthermore, with cards like Neheb, Braid of Fire, Gauntlets of Power, Extraplanar Lens, and Caged Sun, having a ton of mana is easy. There are even Red effects that let you cast a spell without paying its mana cost, meaning for just four mana you can get off a triple burst of something nasty and really bring the game to a close. Just 10 mana gets you three copies of Wildfire, just sayin'. Again, being able to copy their spells would be preferable and there are ways to do that to great effect like Wild Ricochet or good, old-fashioned Fork (or Twincast) but I feel like this plays differently enough if you build around it that you can really devastate someone when a spell gets tripled right in front of their eyes. I recommend you find a way to triple cast a Bribery, but I'm a monster like that.

Kykar is the legendary creature in the set I'm most excited about and the deck I brewed around it is already built with a proxy card occupying the command zone, itching for prerelease weekend to come around so I can jam a foil copy at the helm. This is a versatile card, has both casual and competitive appeal, is an advantage engine that lets you choose between mana and damage and is in great colors for comboing off. It's hard to overstate just how wide the appeal of this card is, but if I had to bet, I'd say this is the most-played commander and possibly the most-played card in Core Set 2020 per EDHREC a month from now. This is something for everyone.

In the decks where you have no elementals, this is another copy of Coiling Oracle, which you may or may not want to pay an extra colorless for. In decks where you DO have elementals, this is stupid advantage. A lot of (unfortunately Red) cards put elemental tokens into play repeatedly and can do it multiple times in a turn, digging you deep into your deck and drawing a ton of cards. If you have Amulet of Vigor this is even more degenerate. Titania, Protector of Argoth can go nuts with this and a sac outlet like Zuran Orb, this creates a feedback loop with Omnath, Locus of Rage and these colors use more elemental creatures than you think, from Avenger of Zendikar to Primalcrux to Vigor. Maelstrom Wanderer loves this card. This is the only non-Rare I'm discussing here but I think it's good enough that it warrants inclusion in a list of the set's most powerful cards.

Six mana for two Hill Giants is a pretty bad rate in Commander so the real question is whether you can figure out any degenerate ways to win the game by making all of your artifacts into the same artifact. You could make everything into a Psychosis Crawler and kill everyone with a Brainstorm. You could make everything into Aetherflux Reservoir and go off with a small number of spells. What if all of your mana rocks became Panharmonicon - could you win then? There is so much potential for such a dumb spell like this. This honestly seems like something that they tried to use as a Tezzeret Ultimate then gave up and put on a card. Six mana is a lot, but if you manage to go off with a handful of artifacts like you probably can in a deck like Urza or Breya or Saheeli or Jhoira, you're going to win on the spot with a lot of different cards. I love silly cards like this and I foresee people needing to use the calculator app on their phones to figure out how dead everyone is because of this card. Even if no one but me plays it, I'm going to play it.

I haven't really gotten the urge to build a 5-color deck, ever. This, however, is the most 75% I have seen. I feel like a deck like Jodah suffers from The Rafiq Problem to a large extent and it's hard not to just make it too consistent to be fun for more than a few games. I'd hate to work that hard and spend that much on a 5-color mana base just to get bored of the deck. Golos, though, seems beautiful and chaotic. Once you assemble you get randomness, pure, chaotic randomness. I love that even though you can keep the deck full of spells to reliably get the mana you need quickly, you can also have total nuts off the top. You can include very expensive spells and play them three at a time, which makes activating Golos very worth it. You can run cards like Brainstorm and even the new spell, Scheming Symmetry or you can just spin the wheel and let it ride. I want the deck to consistently ramp into Golos with up on turn four or so but I don't want it to consistently do anything after that. Hit a Boundless Realms to empty your deck of basics and make your wheel spins more live. Throw Omniscience onto the table for free. Do powerful stuff, but as long as you can't exactly control what happens, you've got a great 75% experience that can throw a wrench into the works of players with better decks but still delight and entertain people with more casual piles. This is what 75% Magic is about.

This is one of the best anthem effects we've seen and to the extent that this is redundant with other tribal anthem effects, great, the more the merrier. This is an anthem that draws cards and that's pretty good, and it can go in any tribal deck because it has no color identity. This will be very popular with casual players and I bet that stained glass looks gorgeous on foil copies of the card, the price of which you'll see in a year and say "woah, when did THAT happen?" I know this isn't a finance article but, come on.

This is to competitive decks what Icon of Ancestry is to casual ones. Experimental Frenzy is absolutely bonkers in Modern Affinity and I think this is just as powerful. In the right build, this is going to let you play through a lot of your deck, especially with cards like Urza, Grand Architect and Metalworker in the mix. This isn't quite Paradox Engine, but it's going to be very good. You can even peel a whammy off of the top and keep the party going without having to blow up the forge. This card is unreal good.

"When you are gone, will anyone remember your story?" - me, to Voidslime

This is three cards in one according to my math and I think that's worthy of a spot in decks. I don't do this kind of Blue mage stuff that often, but I do the kind of Green mage stuff that this card does, and I like to play Blue with my Green so this is a Simic card according to me and I like Simic cards. Keeping them off of their commander, stifling an important activation or making them whiff on a trigger are all ways to stop combos that end the game in their tracks. Sometimes they can just re-activate whatever they were doing, but sometimes you throw a wrench right into their gears and prevent a game from ending. This has enough modes that I can give it a spot in the 99 and it's more fun than Arcane Denial for sure. This is nutty and I want five playsets.

15 cards is a lot, but last time I did a bunch of honorable mentions so this isn't much more. I hope this wasn't a slog - thanks for hanging in there until the end. With a ton more Legendary creatures left in the set, I'll be back with a decklist next week. Until then, leave me something argumentative in the comments section or tell me your top 10 (or 15) for the set. Until next time!