Hey, there! As I promised last week, I’ll be taking a look at the Return to Ravnica cards spoiled so far. As I am writing this on Tuesday, some new awesome stuff might have been spoiled by Thursday when you read this. But fear not; I’ll cover all those new goodies in next week’s article. I’ve decided to focus on cards with potential rather than go through every single card spoiled so far. I know that coming up with decklists at this point in the spoiler season is mostly a waste of time, but I still feel that I want to give you an idea what the cards in question look like when put into the context of a deck.

Bricks and Mortar

One of the most important things that Return to Ravnica will bring to the table is plain old lands. Mana-producing lands are never super-exciting as such, but when there are enough decent lands, new possibilities start popping up. We now have access to the Glacial Fortress cycle as well as five of the original Ravnica duals and the five new Gate lands. Especially for control decks that can afford to play lands that come into play tapped, the options are very diverse. Mana bases in two-color decks will probably be good enough without having to play the Gate lands, but at least they are an option. Another good thing is that they offer mana fixing for players who are on a budget (or playing Pauper), something that is always welcome. Transguild Promenade is another land that enables potential four- or five-color decks.

So, what can we do with all those new duals? The first of my ideas was to make a three-color black deck that looks something like this.

"Jund Control"

• Planeswalkers (7)
• 3 Garruk Relentless
• 4 Liliana of the Dark Realms

• Spells (27)
• 2 Murder
• 2 Tragic Slip
• 3 Abrupt Decay
• 2 Devil's Play
• 3 Bonfire of the Damned
• 4 Mutilate
• 4 Sign in Blood
• 3 Chromatic Lantern
• 4 Underworld Connections

• Lands (26)
• 12 Swamp
• 3 Dragonskull Summit
• 3 Woodland Cemetery
• 4 Blood Crypt
• 4 Overgrown Tomb

Buy This Deck

This list is super-rough, and it just serves as an idea of what you can do. This deck can be pretty much endlessly modified as new cards are spoiled. The main idea is to take advantage of the fixing supplied by the duals, Chromatic Lantern, and Liliana of the Dark Realms. A Jund-colored shell is the most feasible, as having that Swamp subtype is really important for Mutilate to be good. I’m not quite sure how many copies of Woodland Cemetery and Dragonskull Summit you want to play, and the numbers can be tweaked. Bonfire of the Damned is still good and has some synergies with Underworld Connections, and it also gives you another X spell for Liliana’s ultimate. I decided on just the spells as actual win conditions, but you can always make some Wolves and pump them up with Liliana.

Speaking of Underworld Connections, the synergy between it and miracles seems quite strong, as having a chance to hit those miracles twice every turn cycle is really good. An option would be to go for a B/G/W build using Farseek and the Ravnica duals to enable both Underworld Connections and Entreat the Angels in the same deck. You even get to go real deep with Arbor Elf, turning it into a sort of Dark Confidant when combined with Underworld Connections.

Walking the Planes

The two new planeswalkers look sweet enough on their own. Of the two, Jace, Architect of Thought is the one that looks easier to just jam into decks and have it be good on its own. Unlike many of the previous Jaces, this one only has a single really good ability, and the ultimate seems the worst of the bunch. However, the three-card Fact or Fiction seems so good that being able to activate it a couple of times should win you the game. Vraska the Unseen is a bit of a trickier card to make work. Against control decks, it doesn’t do much, and the ultimate isn’t all that impressive either. When facing hordes of small creatures, Vraska the Unseen is ridiculous, easily taking out two or three creatures before dying.

Running Jace in a traditional control shell seems like a good idea. Running blue and white also gives access to Supreme Verdict, which means you can run twelve Wrath effects if you really feel like it. It’s a shame that Azorius Charm is the worst of the Charms so far, and it really doesn’t offer a single mode that you would want to pay 2 mana for. Syncopate is not very exciting as far as counters go, but I guess you have to replace Mana Leak with something. If Cavern of Souls becomes even more popular, it might be that running counterspells is a bad idea in the first place.

Braaaaaains

There have been some decent Zombies spoiled so far, so there is plenty of potential for some good Zombie brews. Lotleth Troll is in my opinion the best of the newly spoiled Zombies. It fits well in the 2-drop slot that has been a bit lacking, and it has some synergy with any Gravecrawlers you draw. Dreg Mangler is another card that has potential in a black and green Zombie deck. It’s difficult to say how good the scavenge mechanic is without having played with it. It has the potential to take over games and give you card advantage when the game goes long. That Diregraf Ghoul that you draw on turn eight sure looks a lot scarier when it’s a 5/5. Here is a quick B/G Zombies list I threw together for illustration purposes.

"B/G Zombies"

• Creatures (26)
• 3 Highborn Ghoul
• 3 Slitherhead
• 4 Diregraf Ghoul
• 4 Dreg Mangler
• 4 Geralf's Messenger
• 4 Gravecrawler
• 4 Lotleth Troll

• Spells (11)
• 3 Abrupt Decay
• 4 Tragic Slip
• 4 Sign in Blood

• Lands (23)
• 11 Swamp
• 4 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Overgrown Tomb
• 4 Woodland Cemetery

Buy This Deck

As it is right now, the deck is still very lacking, but we can hope some decent cards for this type of deck are still to come. The mana base seems very solid as long as you are mainly trying to cast green creatures and not spells. The lands support some number of green spells, such as Abrupt Decay and Garruk Relentless. I’m also not totally sold on Slitherhead, but it does give you another 1-drop, and you get to live the dream by playing a Lotleth Troll as a 4/3 on turn two.

Rancor might also be worth considering. The effect is super-powerful in this kind of deck, but I am just a bit worried about the mana base. Having eight sources was plenty in Delver when you needed to cast those white spells, but that was a deck filled with cantrips. This Zombies concoction only runs eight sources for Rancor, which seems kind of low. You could start adding Forests, but those soon become super-awkward with the Geralf's Messengers.

If green is not your thing, this deck could play red for Falkenrath Aristocrats, Bonfire of the Damned, and Dreadbore, or blue for the more traditional Diregraf Captain. Some sort of Jund Zombies could also work since you get to play twenty nonbasic lands that cast your Zombies.

The Rest

Selesnya also offers a fair share of potential playables, with Dryad Militant, Selesnya Charm, and Loxodon Smiter all being good value for the mana invested. We can hope there will be some more sweet 1- or 2-drops to fill out the curve. Arbor Elf and Avacyn's Pilgrim are both solid when you are looking to jump from 1 to 3, even if there probably won’t be another creature like Knight of the Reliquary to ramp into. Perhaps Ajani, Caller of the Pride will finally have a place in the spotlight.

Rakdos seems a bit lacking at the moment, but there are still loads of cards to be spoiled. People have been excited about Rakdos’s Return, but I can’t honestly say that I’m very thrilled. Sure, it’s good when you get to make your opponent discard his hand and take 4 on turn six, but what if you are being beaten down by a horde of Zombies? The card is obviously very good in various control and midrange matchups in which you can just slam it and generate good value, but discard spells have traditionally been poor in aggressive metagames. And as far as metagames go, I don’t see things slowing down all that much, especially with the various Zombies that have been spoiled.

Next week, I’ll be continuing my look at what Return to Ravnica has in store for us. If you have any additional ideas or opinions on what I should write about, be sure to chime in here in the comments or contact me directly via Twitter.

Thanks for reading,

Max

@thebloom_ on Twitter

Maxx on Magic Online

You can find my music on: http://soundcloud.com/bloomlive