I'm looking over
Rail War at the moment, and it's a pleasant little set. It's unfortunately teeming with renown creatures, a mechanic originally from Magic Origins. I didn't much care for how swingy renown was. There's also a lot to like though.
Projects are a fun update of the level up mechanic from Rise of the Eldrazi. My gut feeling says the numbers on a few of these may be too low, but I really like the concept.
The other great new mechanic is coalesce, which lets you replay an instant or sorcery from your graveyard, but as a creature. I hunk this is a sweet riff on flashback.
And then there's the generic fun build around me's that could have been from any set.
It's funny how this one makes targeted discard (which is normally preferable) worse, and untargeted discard better.
This is a really clever pump spell. Very nice!
I don't like hexproof, but this gets Johnny's gears spinning. Lots of sweet interactions to be had. Again, the hexproof makes it an absolute nightmare to deal with your board.
This is one of those cards you just know they are going to print exactly like this one day.
OP OP! I've got creatures in my cube that can add a counter on demand, making this an every turn tutor. That's a little bit too good, isn't it? However, this could easily be tweaked to tutor only once per turn, on your turn, and you could put an upper bound on the cmc equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on your creature. Something like...
Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are put on a creature you control for the first time on your turn, you may search your library for a creature card with cmc equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on that creature, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
This is a really cool coalesce card, I think. Great up front, and great down the line.
Great
Pernicious Deed (or
Gaze of Granite, I guess) variant.
Now
this is a tantalizing build around!