Magic: The Gathering's upcoming expansion, Bloomburrow, will soon be upon us. With it comes all manner of critters, two cycles of new class enchantments, and more. With all that in mind, I'm not here to talk about any of those. I'm Luka Sharaska, and I'm here to talk about Patchwork Banner.

From a surface level card analysis perspective, there isn't all that much to cover. A whole host of kindred decks can make great use of a mana rock that also pumps a creature type of your choice. It's great in multiples if you can find a way to copy it, it helps you ramp out top-end threats, and it doesn't get swept away by most boardwipes. This much is known if you've read it even once.

Instead of just listing off names like Krenko, Mob Boss or Alela, Artful Provocateur, I'd like to discuss how Patchwork Banner sets a new precedent for what I think we can expect from three-mana rocks in the future. In order to do this, I'd like to go over a short history of how cards like these have evolved over the years, starting with the very first true three-mana rock I could find.

Long before players sleeved up 100 of their favorite cards to pay in a four-player free-for-all, one could find Sol Grail in 12-card packs of Alliances way back in 1996. Later that year, Mana Prism would be printed in Mirage, pushing the envelope just a bit further in some ways.

It would be some time before Wizards of the Coast would iterate upon this formula again, but the wheels of progress would eventually keep turning. Between Pristine Talisman, Coalition Relic, Worn Powerstone, and many others, there were a lot of cards printed before Commander became the powerhouse format it is today. By that time, however, we had already seen a format staple rise to power.

To this day I feel like Commander's Sphere owes its popularity to having such a clean and elegant design. Ramp when you need it, or card draw when you don't. Even today, Commander's Sphere is the most popular three-mana rock in the Commander format by a pretty wide margin, and it manages to show up in tons of preconstructed decks. Just as many players, however, argue that it should be one of the first cards you cut from any deck.

Around this time, roughly 2014, if you were playing three-mana rocks, the emphasis was still on ramp and/or color fixing. If you were playing multiple colors, a two-mana rock like Izzet Signet might not always be what you need, and we weren't quite flush with options when it came to potentially untapped duals just yet. The simple fact is that the format was slower, and you could afford to play slower at most tables.

We all know what happened after that. Commander got more popular, WotC started giving the format more attention, and more powerful cards kept getting added to the format. Battlebond, Modern Horizons, several cycles of potentially untapped duals, partner Commanders, Commander Legends, and so on. The precons of yesteryear were replaced with tuned and focused decks that would do quite well right out of the box, and as the cards got cheaper and more powerful, tools like Darksteel Ingot failed to keep up. As time passed, the bar got higher.

Alongside cards like Bonder's Ornament and Relic of Legends, The Celestus was another 3-mana rock trying to compete in an increasingly powerful format filled to the brim with 2-mana options. Although none of these rose to the heights of cards like Talisman of Dominance and Arcane Signet, they would often still find homes within specific decks looking for those utilities on a card they would already play.

Even now, however, the focus of these artifacts was making mana. Rather, most players see these cards as artifacts you run as mana fixing and or ramp, and they see extra utility as a bonus that occasionally synergizes with your commander; a glorified consolation prize for running the card. But the tide was turning, and we'd soon see artifacts that started flipping this equation upside down.

Cards like Cursed Mirror and Staff of Compleation, alongside Midnight Clock, represent a changing of the guard. Instead of getting an expensive mana rock with a bonus attached, these usually feel like you're getting a cool spell with a mana rock stapled to it. That might sound like I'm just moving words around, but the effects are getting quite powerful.

You put Midnight Clock in your deck because you want to draw seven new cards while you get some extra mana to dump out the rest of your hand. Cursed Mirror gets played because you want a Molten Duplication style effect that leaves behind a mana rock. Staff of Compleation... Well, it's just really good, that's why you play it, but I'm sure you get the point. Finally, we arrive at the current day.

This brings us back to Patchwork Banner, the newest chapter in the story of three-mana rocks. An uncommon from a Standard set. While this isn't quite the first of its kind, a strong utility artifact with mana production stapled on, it is emblematic of what I think we can expect to see from WotC going forward.

I've been playing Commander for a long time, and players have been debating about the playability of three-mana rocks for even longer. While I don't think that debate is ever going to end, I'm happy to see the scales tipped back into their favor, if only incidentally. I want WotC to give us more reasons to slow down and ramp out powerful plays, and this does exactly that.

That's All, Folks

That's all I've got for you today. If you were expecting a decklist or recommended commanders, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I feel like that article almost writes itself. Thanks for reading this far, I really appreciate it, and I hope you appreciate just how many mana rocks had to fall from favor to get us here. I've been Luka Sharaska, and I hope to see you at the game shop playing something truly furocious.