Since I’ve started playing around with Emperor of Bones a lot in all three of my primary formats, I’ve been thirsting for a way to cleanly and consistently remove the counters from him in order to reactivate him with his own ‘Adapt’ trigger. Most effects currently either remove one counter once per turn or multiple counters in a one time use.

Now, the setup here is a bit tricky: the restriction of having to exile something with Dissident before being able to remove any of your counters makes the available timing for reusing the Emperor a little slim. But the payoff means being able to put multiple cards from the graveyard onto the battlefield at very little mana cost.

(Honorable mentions: All Other Champions)

All of the ‘Champion’ cards from this set are quite strong. And they’d have to be in order to justify their high casting cost (harkening back to the “Champion” mechanic from original Lorwyn).

While I think that it’d be a little difficult to rely on casting these cards consistently (and often the cost outways the benefit of casting it), there are plenty of ways to cheat creatures into play. Most prominently (and probably most useful) is Birthing Ritual. Birthing Ritual in particular also provides a constant stream of elementals for Champion of the Path. Combined with the Incarnations’ ability to cheat on mana cost could prove deadly.

Giving anything ‘Persist’ seems very cool as both a way to save creatures that are about to die au natural, and as a way to save an evoked elemental incarnation like Solitude. Karakas allows repeated usage of this card, while also providing protection, something that has been coming up more and more as WOTC decides to continue printing good legends. 

The second ability incidentally frees up Emperor of Bones for a second usage, just like I mentioned earlier.

(Honorable mentions: All of the new-to-Timeless Special Guest cards)

Painter’s Servant and Grindstone together in Timeless at last! I’m not sure if the combo is strong enough to see serious play (maybe once we get Urza’s Saga or Pyroblast in the format), but I’m excited nonetheless. Devoted Druid, Slippery Bogle, Goblin Sharpshooter, and Manamorphose also make their first appearance, allowing for a larger variety of combo based strategies to choose from.

I love the designs of all of these cards! While I feel like none of them are quite strong enough to be considered a staple, the colors and modality of these cards will let them pop up in many decks.

Emptiness is my personal favorite (as anyone who has watched me play black/white blink piles for the past year could have guessed), its ability to pitch to Solitude along with the ability to recur many useful creatures and removal abilities the card actually has will be very fun to play around with. 

The other cards have their uses, the fact that the blue ones pitch to Force of Will and the green ones can be found with Summoner’s Pact gives them some cool utility, and they all trigger Up the Beanstalk! Of course, when evoked (which is going to be the primary use for these cards), they can be saved by Ephemerate, Consign to Memory, or even Splash Portal in Standard!

Ryan is one of our resident card staff in our Howell location. He enjoys many of Magic's 60-card formats like Modern and Legacy, as well as dabbling in Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and most recently One Piece. 

Ryan always enjoys having a reason to laugh. And when he's not dealing with cardboard (and sometimes when he is), he enjoys reading manga, watching anime, listening to music and playing video games.