It is time return to Eldraine!

Of course, we all remember what happened the last time we visited the plane of Eldraine, as Throne of Eldraine has gone down in infamy as one of the most powerful sets printed in recent memory. And this wasn't "Urza's Saga, everyone dies on turn two combo hell" powerful, but more F.I.R.E. design pushing the rate on fair cards to highs never seen before.

What will Wilds of Eldraine have in store for us? Will it repeat the mistakes of Throne of Eldraine? Will it readjust too low and be a very weak set? Or will the porridge be juuuuust right?

As of writing this there are about 195 of 233 cards previewed, meaning we've got a pretty good look at the set as a whole, which means it's time for first impressions in the form of my love/hates! Note that these are not just static rankings. The point is to shed light on cards I think are being over or undervalued based on first impressions. The point of my Love/Hate article is not just to call cards good or bad, but to view cards based on the first impressions people have been having or are likely to have. The goal is to dispel undue hype or to draw attention to cards that are being overlooked.

Let's get started!

Love - The "Restless" Creature Lands

Lets get the easy one out of the way - creature lands are awesome, and the new "restless" cycle of enemy creature lands are all excellent.

Enters the battlefield tapped dual lands have always been solid in Standard with a bit of upside, and adding a mana sink as well as a threat to your mana base is an extremely welcome addition to the format. These are all templated the same, entering tapped, producing two colors, activating into a creature with a variety of sizes/costs, and having some sort of trigger on attacking.

Of these, Restless Bivouac seems like the best aggressive option, being both cheap as well as scaling, and Restless Cottage and Restless Fortress both seem like excellent midrange options. Being able to present a threat as well as gain life is great, and we all know how good having incidental graveyard removal on your land is from Hive of the Eye Tyrant.

These will be a defining feature of new Standard and may see a little bit of play in Pioneer and Historic as well!

Hate - The Irencrag

It has been a long time since we've had a true 2-drop mana rock in Standard, with the most recent being Worldwake's Everflowing Chalice (2010) and the more temporary Sphere of the Suns from Mirrodin Besieged (2011).

Cards like Mind Stone and Dimir Signet may be a bit too good for Standard, but The Irencrag is about as awkward of a mana rock as they come.

First off, it is legendary, which already makes it tough to play that many copies, but perhaps even more strange is the transformation it undergoes when you play a legendary creature. The wording is tough to parse (this would have been much better as a flip card), but once a legendary creature enters the battlefield under your control, this ceases to be a mana rock and essentially turns into a Vulshok Battlegear.

Vulshok Battlegear is not a good Magic card.

This means you get a colorless mana rock that is legendary so it's hard to play more than a few copies, and you can't play any legendary creatures in your deck or it turns into a piece of garbage. That's a lot of hoops for a very small gain.

Love - Lord Skitter, Sewer King

Any Black card that makes a bunch of material is worth a second look. Cards like Ophiomancer and Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia are great resource creation machines, and Lord Skitter, Sewer King is cut from the same cloth.

You get your rat token almost immediately, meaning instant value, and the sizing here of 4 power for three mana is also at a very solid rate too. The rat tokens not being able to block is a downside, but no worse than Jadar's zombies not being able to block and being temporary or Goblin Rabblemaster's goblins always having to attack.

Bargain is a mechanic in this set that is looking for things to sacrifice, and there are always effects looking for material to use. Lord Skitter is good on rate and great on synergy, making it a very exciting card. And it even provides some graveyard hate too!

Hate - Three Blind Mice

I know we're all spoiled on Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivity in Standard, but Three Blind Mice is explicitly not Wedding Announcement. Three Blind Mice is a great example of the spread between the floor (the worst it can be) and the ceiling (the best it can be) of a card.

At its best, Three Blind Mice will be copying some sort of high value 3/3 or 4/4 token twice for major upside, and then killing your opponent the turn chapter four goes off. Don't get me wrong, that would be very good for three mana, but that's often not going to be the case.

At its worst, Three Blind Mice is going to make a 1/1, it is going to die, and then the remaining chapters aren't going to do anything at all. This of course is unacceptable, especially when there's a card in the format that just gives you three 1/1s and turns into a Glorious Anthem as a floor.

Don't be tempted by the high ceiling!

Love - The Faerie Cards

The biggest impediments to a typal deck not being successful are usually a lack of good enough reasons to play the creature type, as well as a lack of good interaction because your stuff playing all creatures.

Well, we haven't seen the full set yet, but Faeries has gotten quite the suite of interactive spells here. We've seen from Make Disappear how good Quench plus upside can be in Standard, and Spell Stutter is much easier to improve on. Ego Drain is very interesting, as it's a Thoughtseize you don't want to play on turn one, but most of the time in Standard important things aren't happening until turn three-4 anyway. And Faerie Fencing is a super Disfigure that can scale and kill Sheoldred, the Apocalypse later, which is excellent.

And to turn them on?

Love - Sleep-Cursed Faerie

When Sleep-Cursed Faerie was first previewed, many of these spells weren't yet, so it didn't look very impressive. On pure rate, Sleep-Cursed Faerie is just a large but slow flier. Ward is nice, but you need to sink a lot of time or mana into before you actually get anything out of it.

Unless you just need a faerie in play for the above-mentioned spells!

Because all of those spells are so good, Sleep-Cursed Faerie is much more of an enabler than a pure rate card, and one mana for an enabler that powers up your spells and protects itself is excellent. This is going to be a very important card in Standard.

Hate - Heartflame Duelist

It is amazing what the effect of swapping mana costs is, as Heartflame Duelist is no Bonecrusher Giant.

One of the common themes so far this preview season has been that many of the adventure cards feature spells that are more expensive than the creatures they are attached too. This is an obvious lesson learned from Throne of Eldraine, where too many of the adventure cards were incredible on rate because they gave you an entire curve. Stomp on turn two, Bonecrusher Giant on turn three is an excellent way to start a Standard game, and it all comes from one card!

Heartflame Duelist looks somewhat like Bonecrusher Giant in that it's a clean two for one as well as a removal spell plus threat, but it both lacks the ability to curve as well as the rate on each side. Three mana for a Lightning Bolt is very clunky, and the 3/1 body with a rarely useful ability is far too fragile to make much of an impact.

Perhaps extra burn like Stoke the Flames could turn the tide here, but Heartflame Duelist is a fringe player at best.

Love - Mosswood Dreadknight

However, if you're looking for an awesome adventure card, look no further than Mosswood Dreadknight.

Usually, you need to play the adventure half of your adventure card first to gain value, which means you aren't always playing to the board, but Mosswood Dreadknight gives you a well-sized two-drop creature that both attacks and blocks well on turn two, and then once it dies you can start a very powerful value chain. Being able to adventure Dread Whispers from the graveyard and cast Mosswood Dreadknight is an amazing amount of value for such a cheap and efficient creature.

Green has been mostly absent from Standard in recent months, but Mosswood Dreadknight (in concert with Glissa Sunslayer and the great Black cards) may just change that.

Not Quite Throne, But That's Okay!

A common theme looking over the Wilds of Eldraine card list is seeing a lot of cards to like, but nothing jumps off the page like some of the Throne of Eldraine cards, which is a great place to be! This is an important set for Standard in the no-rotation world, as well as being the format for The World Championships for me later next month, so it's a big one!

It also means it's time once again for Ten New Brews!

As usual, I'll be building ten new Standard decks during the Early Access Streamer Event on MTG Arena next Thursday August 31st, streaming them live on Twitch.tv, putting them on my YouTube, as well as writing all about them in next week's article right here on CoolStuffInc.com!

There's a lot of fun stuff to dig into here, I can't wait!