Sets (NEO) Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Previews

This set is so fucking good

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Chris Taylor

Contributor
There's so many bangers recently, I'm just gonna vomit my thoughts and also shamelessly paste jokes from the discord if you've missed some:

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This I wanna call out as being less good than it seems actually, casting an artifact spell is much worse than artifact ETB, so this is mostly smaller than it looks, even if ward 2 on a 2 drop is above where you'd expect it.

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Jiro dreams of Aristocrats over here is solid. I've found myself in two extremes with my aristocrats cards: either everything costs 1 or everything costs 3, and this can help balance that out. I don't love the hefty activation cost, but this isn't really something you're meant to be looping like goblin bombardment: you don't need to draw that many more cards for this to be threatening, provided you have the time and mana to do so.

Also: this is an actual rare case of an enchantment creature that will end up in the graveyard (as opposed to say, courser of kruphix) so it's actual delirium support!

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Huh, this is pretty cool. I guess it makes sense it say permanent, you could just get time warp back....IT'S A 6/5?!?!
Big baneslayer energy, but ninjitsu changes that dynamic. Love it. Ink-Eyes of kamigawa past had a similar dynamic.

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It's low powered sure, but Arc Trail/Open Fire with some splash damage is intriguing. To any hearthstone players, Swipe (this but 4 mv and 4 damage) always played better than it looked, and it looked great. (And yes I get that damage is permanent in hearthstone, and there's also spellpower, but still!)

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This is excellent as haste enablers go, and (until they print ward lightning greaves for y'all) I love seeing stuff like this
The issue I see here is the equip being R instead of 1 probably ends up being a big deal.

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Speaking of haste enablers this also seems interesting! It's probably the most punishing of the available options to draw out of order, but MAN this is also a glorious anthem if you draw it in order.
Also the fail case of being a slow pump spell is not nothing either.

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I'd been running hellrider mostly for lack of options I liked in that role and while this is worse, I'm interested.
 
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Neat dog. It's Champion of the Parish but triggers off of 50~ more cards (149 to 99 in my cube), even if it sees a ~30% decrease in white cards that trigger it (29 to 19). Will probably include as an "in addition to" rather than an "instead of", but I like this ability and I've been keen on including more Legendary-matters cards.

One of the rare cases where I may get the extended art to remove reminder text!

EDIT: Can I take a moment to complain in the strongest possible terms about extended art cards? I don't like them aesthetically, but now I'm forced to go after them to get the art that has the intended composition. It was a horrible thing they did to the art when they first introduced the extended frame rares, blowing up the art and cropping it to extend it, but I think it's even worse now, especially on cards like this, where it's cutting off both vertically and horizontally because of the lowered text box.

You can absolutely tell the composition is not right on the "standard" version of the card, it looks like it's been awkwardly cropped because it is. This is true across the board and it's a shameful mistreatment of the stunning art this game has and its artists, who don't seem to be getting good enough art direction to help them make the piece work in the standard frame and extended frame best they can. I can tolerate all this nonsense around alternative frames and arts and the like -- it's fun even! -- but I'm really frustrated with WotC's mistreatment of the art for extended frames.
 
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gosh the more i look at this set the more amazed i am at the discrepancy between my two cubes…
my arena artisan cube is picking up 20+ cards and may need a full redesign for this set
my paper cube MIGHT run a couple of the 1-2 drops that are going into the artisan cube, and like… the channel lands. and if i do the channel lands i’m gonna make custom versions that are less texty.
it’s just crazy how juiced the commons and uncommons are vs how… “fine” the rares are.
like sure i COULD run Blade of the Oni and Lion Sash, maybe Emperor-chan and Kaito, but… i don’t have design gaps that are crying out for any of these cards. and Reconfigure is a weird mechanic i don’t feel i need to include just for those two “fine” rares.

but WOW the commons and uncommons folks holy moly
 
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(insert Goku yelling noises here)

8RR
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast this spell, you may tap any number of untapped creatures you control. This spell costs 1 less for each creature tapped this way.

Explosive Singularity deals 10 damage to any target.



This is a fun little (big) burn spell. 4 creatures makes it 6 mana, which is an achievable mana cost. Not to mention the fun you can have with the likes of:
 
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(insert Goku yelling noises here)

8RR
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast this spell, you may tap any number of untapped creatures you control. This spell costs 1 less for each creature tapped this way.

Explosive Singularity deals 10 damage to any target.



This is a fun little (big) burn spell. 4 creatures makes it 6 mana, which is an achievable mana cost. Not to mention the fun you can have with the likes of:
"let... me... copy it... just one time... hnnnnggg"
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I swore off doing "card type matters" archetypes beyond "noncreature spells matter," but this set is making me reconsider my position on those archetypes. Ux Artifact Pile could give my blue section some depth it's currently missing as a primary color, and enchantress is cool.

The big problem with enchantress (as I have outlined several times before) is that the best enchantment payoffs don't tend to come down until the stage in the game after you want to cast all of your early enchantments. As cool as Eidolon of Blossoms and Archon of Sun's Grace are, they just don't do the work they need to do on a consistent basis. While making these cards cheaper could help, it appears WOTC might be taking an alternative strategy. If we could trigger constellation an additional time for free the turn these enter the battlefield, they would be great. And it looks like WOTC might be helping us here! Take a look at this:
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Notice something? Here, I'll show you what I'm talking about:


Still didn't see it?


Common dual land.

Now there's a chance these are going to be Thornwood Falls type cards or some other bad dual land from core sets. But I'd like to pose an alternative theory: what if these are common Enchantment lands? We just saw the Bridges in Modern Horizons 2, which were indestructible artifact lands. Those cards really haven't caused any problems anywhere. What if WOTC is using this set as a chance to introduce (non-saga) Enchantment Lands to magic? It would fit with the set and setting, letting WOTC show off idyllic portions of the old spirit Kamigawa while supporting the set's enchantment theme. It also lets WOTC help push enchantment decks in older formats, especially ones that play Constellation cards, without breaking limited or standard.

I'm like 50/50 on this but I think if WOTC prints enchantment lands I'm going to try Constellation again.
I have sad news:
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It is better and worse. Better because you can pay half now half later, worse because it is not instant and when deployed it can be destroyed.
The final ability isn't sorcery-limited, so the only sorcery part is the 2 mana of the actual casting of it. Typically still flexible enough to allow for a counterspell or other spell on the opponent's turn as needed, before popping it EOT their turn.

For anyone with an artifact theme they are trying to support, this seems quite a bit better overall. One thing I love is that it's 2cmc, which is a major hole in a lot of trinket curves for this:

which often has a glut of 1 mana options, and then a jump to 3 mana stuff.
 
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