Murders at Karlov Manor is here and is already making waves across multiple formats, and it's doing so in a very fun, supplemental way.

There aren't any absurd game breaking combos like there was with The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, which spawned two big combo decks in Pioneer with Geological Appraiser and Amalia Benavides Aguirre, the former of which ended up getting banned. However, there are a lot of fun cards for a variety of decks that are making an impact across pretty much every format, as well as a set of rare lands that are going to change the way we build mana bases in basically every format going forward.

As such, today we're going to look at some of these cards from Murders at Karlov Manor that have already made an impact, and stand to make more noise going forward. These are the cards you're going to want to either be getting on board with now or figuring out to beat, because there's a good chance this success will continue and they will become staples.

So, let's go!

Leyline of the Guildpact

Okay, well maybe there's one card that's been shaking things up big time across multiple formats, and it's a card that many people (myself included) had concluded was essentially unplayable.

Leyline of the Guildpact is a wild Magic card.

In many ways, it doesn't really do that much. You can't build your deck around assuming it will be in play, as there's always a chance you won't start the game with it in play or your opponent will be able to deal with it, leaving you without the ability to reliably cast any of your spells. Because fetchlands and triomes are so good at completing domain anyway, as well as doing so in a super reliable manner, Leyline of the Guildpact just feels wildly inconsistent and redundant.

However, there are two major factors that saw Leyline of the Guildpact make serious waves last weekend at the Modern US Regional Championship.

The first and most important is by far how the enchantment interacts with Scion of Draco, making it a two mana 4/4 flying, lifelink, hexproof, first strike, trample monster that also grants all of these abilities to all of your other creatures. Decks like Rhinos and more normal Domain Zoo decks utilize this effect extremely well, as it's almost impossible to win a Rhinos mirror when all of your opponent's Rhinos have first strike and lifelink.

The other big factor is the fact that Leyline of the Guildpact is all five colors, meaning it can pitch to any of the powerful pitch cards in Modern for the times that it's not in your opening hand. Force of Negation, Subtlety, Solitude and more all take what would be a dead card and make it useful again.

These specific conditions likely lead to Leyline of the Guildpact mostly being for formats that have Scion of Draco and pitch spells, but I can't say I'm not extremely surprised by this development.

The Surveil Lands

The other big one, especially for formats that have fetchlands like Modern, Timeless, and Cube, is the surveil lands.

It's hard to quantify how powerful these lands are until you play with them, but if you care about the graveyard at all or care about finding certain cards, they are a monumental leap over the old scrylands. Being fetchable is the major draw in older formats, which allow you them on demand, giving you card selection as well as graveyard filling as needed. Having basic land types allows them to fetchable, but also helps them count for domain as things like buddy lands and castles.

Even in non-fetchland formats, these lands are phenomenal for decks that care about the graveyard or don't have many early plays. Every time you are able to dump a graveyard-important card off of one of these, it's like your dual land just cast a free Entomb.

There's not much more to say; these are great and you should play them!

Cryptic Coat

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the set so far is an odd equipment without an equip cost, Cryptic Coat. Now of course, if you'd watched my set review where I gave it the Sleeper award for Blue you'd be a little more in the know, but even then I wasn't exact sure what people would be doing with it.

Well, the fact of the matter is that it's just a really solid card. At the absolute floor you're getting a 3/2 unblockable, ward 2 creature for three mana, but the upside of being able to bounce and recast it over and over again is huge.

However, it goes deeper than that. In older formats, there's a whole bunch of tricks.

Being fetchable with Stoneforge Mystic is big game for such a self-contained threat, as you can bounce and replay it over and over again for big value in longer games.

On the other side of things, you can also use it on huge creatures with drawbacks related to being cast or entering the battlefield like Phyrexian Dreadnaught or Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, setting up with Brainstorm and getting them onto the battlefield safely with ward 2.

In more current formats like Standard or Pioneer, the raw rate of the card shines through more. It's a solid threat, solid late game engine, and also an artifact for decks that care about things like that. Ward 2 also goes a long way early in the game at making sure your threat sticks and throwing your opponent off curve.

That's a lot of praise for a simple three-mana card!

Warleader's Call

Valentine's Day was this week and love is clearly in the air, because Glorious Anthem and Impact Tremors have had a baby!

Warleader's Call is a card that exemplifies being more than the sum of its parts, as each effect does a good job covering for the other's weaknesses. Impact Tremors is bad because taking turn two off to play an enchantment is just bad tempo, but the effect is still good, while decks that would want Glorious Anthem sometimes struggle with having reach in board stalls.

Couple this with the fact that there are already a number of good go-wide Boros decks in Standard and Pioneer and you've got a recipe for a solid, if unexciting, card. It's also a very good tool in Standard against decks playing Sunfall, as it's a way to add to the board that doesn't get swept and helps you finish them off despite losing your board.

Insidious Roots

In the opposite corner from the "solid if unexciting" Warleader's Call is the extremely high ceiling of Insidious Roots.

You saw me play the card both on Ten New Brews as well as right here on CoolStuffInc.com on Monday, and while both showings were impressive it still feels like we're barely scratching the surface with the card. While Warleader's Call is just a solid aggro card, Insidious Roots is a powerful engine that needs the right cards around to do great and terrible things.

A big part of the equation is definitely Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, which performs double duty of returning two mana enablers from the graveyard as well as triggering Insidious Roots, to also giving all of the tokens haste so they can make mana immediately which makes a lot of loops possible.

This is the kind of card that has potential in pretty much every format if the right engine cards around it work out well, but that's also going to be quite the puzzle to solve.

Pro Tour Chicago

While there are still Standard RCQs as well as other events in formats like Modern happening, for now my eyes turn to Pioneer and Murders at Karlov Manor draft, which will be the two formats of Pro Tour Chicago in two weeks!

I leave tomorrow for the testing house and will be doing my usual predictions article next Friday on the eve of the Pro Tour, so make sure you tune in to see how I do.

Wish me luck!