My least favorite set in Magic history, aesthetically. Certainly the worst art direction in the modern era. That's a pretty hard feat to have when we have both the introduction of the Guidelight Voyagers (the best artifact creature designs for Magic since the Myr) and our first real look at Muraganda.
I hate the shallowness of the references, I hate that one of the the key arts
as well as the set's central planeswalker/character
and her token are homages to Akira....because she rides a bike? Not because they're making any allusions to biker gangs, post-apocalyptic worlds, ESP, cyberpunk, or anything else. I hate the names of the mechanics.
I thought Murders at Karlov Manor was a bit clunky, but I still was overall happy with the set. I loved Outlaws of Thunder Junction, despite its misgivings. This set has similar problems to those in the tropification and Hearthstoneification of Magic, but cranked up to 11 and without as much of the charm of those sets. Start Your Engines/Speed is a pretty unpleasant mechanic even outside of the flavor: it's fundamentally parasitic, slow, and requires outside tracking for something that only matters outside of "max speed" for a handful of cards. I would've thought WotC would have learned their lesson from The Ring Tempts You, but at least that made the external tracking feel worthwhile and it was novel to have your creatures become ring-bearers one at a time.
That said, this set is not without its merits, mostly found in excellent individual card designs. I've said many times here and on Reddit that I'll be picking up cards for future lower-powered Cube environments, as my main list, the
California Premiership Cube, is fairly high powered.
Anyways, here's what I'm most interested in for my main list:
My New Ride-or-Dies: Immediate Staples
Words cannot express how much I love these cards. The Mako is everything I want in my one-drops and pairs so well with Red's ever-increasing looting themes -- and even has an out if you really need to see one more card! Stridehangar Automaton is the synergy engine that will power a million durdly decks that leans into WotC's propensity to give us neat artifact trinkets in every set in the best way possible. Who doesn't love to win with Thopters? I really
really need WotC to print
Emporium Thopterist for real now like they did with that cycle in MB2 though, or perhaps just finally rip off the tape and do it myself.
Essential Wacky Racers
(and the rest of the Verges)
These are all pretty obvious picks, with maybe the exception of the Skyray -- but maybe I'm wrong about that one, as I was delighted to see wtwlf123 also include in his testing list. Greasewrench Goblin is probably a tier above here, being pretty close to the ideal 1-drop for my Cube's goals (and is better than Ragavan when drawn late much of the time!). Agonasaur Rex is the kind of Timmy stats that delight the heck out of my players, and I'm thrilled for another self-cycling Dino for
Intrepid Paleontologist and
Welcome to... // Jurassic Park (which is currently sitting in the on-deck binder for complexity reasons).
I'm very happy to have the full Verge cycle so quickly. I thought they'd be too similar in quality to
the "Slow Lands" from MID/VOW (which were just below the level I wanted in my Cube) but I think they've been shown to be meaningfully better for having playable games. I'll be swapping out the
ten Kaldheim Pathways for them, which I loved both for their art and for their ability to help fixing without enabling 5C goodstuff mana bases quite as well.
My Cube is 720 cards, so it's very normal for me to have 15-20 new cards a set, so my large car pool for this set is not necessarily representative of any favor I hold towards this set.
Side-Car Riders
Of these, I think I'll probably end up with
Repurposing Bay,
Quag Feast,
The Last Ride,
Marketback Walker,
Riptide Gearhulk, and
Night Market, but I remain open to these and more. There are about 10 other cards I really like the design of but don't really make sense for my Cube at the moment.
