When a new set is coming out, it's always very exciting looking over the new cards and figuring out where they should go. Sometimes it's adding cards to already established decks, or even more fun is figuring out what new decks or archetypes we can build with the new cards.

However, one of the most important things in the "building new decks" process is recognizing that there are many more cards currently in a format than are being added, and these cards are just as important as the cards that are new.

At the time they were printed, Greasefang, Okiba Boss, Amalia Benavides Aguirre, and Raffine, Scheming Seer were all the new and flashy cards, but because they were printed all of the sudden Parhelion II, Wildgrowth Walker, and Dennick, Pious Apprentice // Dennick, Pious Apparition all went from zeros to key cards in top tier decks as a result respectively.

Picking out these high potential cards that may be breaking out when combined with additions from the new set is an important skill, and as such today we're going to look at some already legal cards that may be set up to be big players once the new set releases!

Infinite Merfolk Combos

Deeproot Pilgrimage is a card that got some hype when it was first released as a never-ending source of merfolk tokens, but this hype was mostly dispelled once players realized that attacking with five merfolk would only net you one token as they are all considered to be tapping together. This low ceiling in aggressive merfolk decks, basically the only kind to exist in Standard and Pioneer, left it riding the bench.

However, this may no longer be the case thanks to Forensic Researcher.

Forensic Researcher looks like a harmless draft card, until you realize what the effect two of these has in play alongside Deeproot Pilgrimage. Can you say infinite merfolk tokens? And of course, both cards just play fine with a bunch of other merfolk cards, making the combo fairly low effort.

There's also more support available. In Standard you can use Agatha's Soul Cauldron for redundancy, as a single Forensic Researcher exiled to the Soul Cauldron will allow all of your merfolk with counters on them to have the ability, and the explore merfolk are naturally very good at having counters on them. In older formats like Pioneer, Kiora's Follower provides you another level of redundancy, giving you two untap creatures to combo with.

These sort of creature-based combos are very exciting because they don't take up many slots and can exist alongside a reasonable plan B of just playing a kindred deck.

Cool Land Stuff

There's an odd amount of sweet "lands in graveyards" stuff in Standard right now.

Cards like Blossoming Tortoise and Soul of Windgrace are both ways to repeatedly recur lands from your graveyard right onto the battlefield, while the surprisingly powerful Slogurk, the Overslime wants to see lands hit the graveyard and is amazing with the Neon Dynasty Channel Lands. And that's to say nothing of cards like Titania, Voice of Gaea or Deeproot Wayfinder.

Murders at Karlov Manor adds to the pile here with a few wild ones.

Aftermath Analyst is the rare combination of enabler and payoff, stapling Splendid Reclamation onto a 2-drop creature that blocks well and fills your graveyard. Undergrowth Recon is a unique card that provides ramp and recursion turn after turn, albeit a bit slow. And lastly Worldsoul's Rage is an odd Fireball variant that can also ramp out of the graveyard.

Don't forget that the New Capenna common fetchlands are still legal, giving you an easy way to get lands into your graveyard to recur every turn, and you can also play up to eight Field of Ruin effects which also do well to be played out of the graveyard over and over again.

What does a lands deck in Standard look like? I'm not sure, but there certainly are many tools available.

Graveyard Fun

The graveyard is one of the most powerful zones in Magic, but while there are actually a ton of graveyard matters cards in Standard right now, we haven't really seen a full-on graveyard deck.

Deathbonnet Sprout // Deathbonnet Hulk, Urborg Lhurgoyf, and Cruel Somnophage are all cheap but big threats that scale with your graveyard, and all also self-enable in some way as well. It's a pretty good assortment on rate, considering we've been stuck with things like Boneyard Wurm in the past which pale in comparison.

With the new mechanic collect evidence, as well as surveil being everywhere, the graveyard is a big deal in Murders at Karlov Manor, giving us a host of interesting graveyard cards.

Both Snarling Gorehound and Festerleech are very interesting and cheap graveyard enablers, potentially dumping a bunch of creatures in the graveyard while also most importantly being creatures themselves. They're also cheap and not shy about getting into the red zone which is excellent.

Not quite cut from the same cloth but also operating in the same graveyard space is the very interesting enchantment Insidious Roots. Obviously if you're removing creatures from your graveyard then pure counting cards like Cruel Somnophage get less interesting, but if you're able to consistently trigger Insidious Roots with things like Graveyard Tresspasser or Deathbonnet Hulk, the plants will get awful big awful fast. And each plant allows a new surveil off of Snarling Gorehound too!

There's a lot to explore here.

Goblins!

Let's face it, we haven't had a good Goblin deck in Standard in a very, very long time. They always give us one or two Goblin cards at a time, but never enough to actually put together an entire deck.

Rundvelt Hordemaster is probably the best goblin "lord" we've ever seen, and sees play in a variety of older formats like Pioneer, Modern, Historic, and even Legacy occasionally, but sees zero play in Standard because he doesn't have any friends. There are a few other good goblins in the format like Squee, Dubious Monarch and Exuberant Fuseling, but not enough to field a team.

Well, Murders at Karlov Manor brings two goodies!

Both Krenko, Baron of Tin Street and Crime Novelist are 3-drop goblins that love artifacts, with Krenko in particular being very exciting as a very on rate creature that can also pump the team as well as pump out threats. Other goblins like Exuberant Fuseling or Gleeful Demolition already have an artifact slant so it's not hard to see a deck coming together here. Crime Novelist is a bit more of a combo card, going infinite with Animation Module among other things, but is still a powerful tool.

We may have finally hit critical mass!

Lifegain Payoffs

We've seen Ajani's Pridemate make waves in Constructed before, and we've got two of the best versions of Ajani's Pridemate the game has ever seen in Standard right now in Voice of the Blessed and Amalia Benavides Aguirre. Both get very large very fast as long as you can keep gaining life, providing massive threats for the low cost of only two mana. There's also the surprisingly excellent Gumdrop Poisoner, which also fits very well into the theme.

So, what changes with Murders at Karlov Manor?

Case of the Uneaten Feast joins Lunarch Veteran // Luminous Phantom as a one-two punch of never-ending lifegain triggers, while also providing some very nice late game upside as well that is excellent against removal spells. This is the perfect kind of synergy enabler, a hard to interact with card that is great early but also good late.

Sol Rings

If you watch my content at all you know I'm enamored with Omen Hawker, the little Sol Ring that could.

Omen Hawker, as well as the very similar The Enigma Jewel // Locus of Enlightenment, both offer Sol Ring levels of mana production and efficiency, but are locked into only being usable for abilities, not spells. There are already a number of ways to utilize this in Standard, but not really enough to fully support a deck.

Enter clue tokens.

The new Forensic Gadgeteer is an amazing source of clue tokens, and being able to turn right around and draw cards off those clues without spending any "mana" is very powerful Throw in some other clue makers like Novice Inspector or Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth (who also is a big fan of Omen Hawker mana) and you start reaching critical mass for Omen Hawker mana sinks pretty quick.

There's a lot of clever deck-building that needs to be done here, but the payoff of playing Sol Ring in Standard is a desirable one.

Ten New Brews!

The good news is that we're about to move away from the theoretical and into the empirical!

Murders at Karlov Manor releases this weekend at your local pre-releases, and on MTG Arena and Magic Online on Tuesday, February 6th, which is exactly where I'll be with my Ten New Brews!

Ten new Standard decks jam packed full of Murders and Karlov Manor cards will be played, as we get our first look at the format and now these new cards work. As always, next week's article right here on CoolStuffInc.com will go over all ten of those decks in great detail, examining what worked and what didn't, as well as looking at the future prospects of each deck.

I'll see you there!