Sets (NEO) Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Previews

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Friendship ended with Seb McKinnon. A. M. Sartor is my new best artist friend for moody, monochromatic stuff my teenage self would and still does adore.


...not to make light of the situation, of course. It's just a funny coincidence that WotC hires a new artist that hits a lot of the same notes for me and that they debut just a couple days after the Seb debacle. I'm also getting a lot of Wylie Beckert vibes, but I don't think Wylie did any art for this set?
 
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I've never been embarrassed to run Complicate even at my power level and this seems like it's got more upside, even ignoring the near-uncounterability of Channel and its ability to counter abilities as well. Wild! I love accidentally having a fat artifact creature in my graveyard after using my counter spell.


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The naming matches Gideon's Intervention but it's actually Gideon's Reproach but without Gideon (because he's dead).


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Just cool art and name, nothing here worth cubing about imo.

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These effects are only so far off from being Mainstream Cubable™, and finally being able to hit planeswalkers....doesn't help all that much, because these effects are better in lower-powered cubes where there are much fewer 'walkers.


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Too bad she didn't cast it on herself!!


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I think I still prefer Behold the Multiverse to this but it's honestly not that far off.

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Shimmerdrift Vale with excellent art and only missing the snow? Can't say I mind it.


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Wish the art on the Big Playable dual lands was this good, holy wow. Just stunning stuff across the whole cycle.
 
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.
I meant more in the lines of deploying it and not having enough mana left to activate. Then getting batterhorned or something like it will hurt a bit.
 
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They are all striving to win "ugliest magic card in existence".

That being said, the set has actually a few cards that evoke the feeling of kamigawa to certain degrees, and I'll be adding seven cards or so to my cube. I'll probably just ignore this limited set and be happy with my white ninja fox.
 
These all look quite different to me. Color palette is consistent on purpose I'm sure, and I bet they are trying to worldbuild some sort of standard design principals for the like "rat style" power armors (the moonfolk mechs have a very different but also internally consistent design).

Eh, I strongly disagree. A big part of Magic's appeal and why it works as a card game is a player's ability to parse a boardstate based on visual indicators and shortcuts when declaring actions (Wrath the board, mill you for three, Bolt you, etc.). These break that convention with similar color palettes, nonsensical names, and utilizing the same crew mechanic. This isn't just a new Kamigawa problem as we've seen it many times in the past, but I can't think of the last time it was this blatant and seemingly phoned in.

Hypothetically if all three were across the table from me, I'm going to need to flip to get a look at each one because there is very little distinction on first glance.
 
Going to post the art from the set I appreciate, before I post my final stance on the set as a whole.








With Repel the Vile being my overall favorite. Dominik Mayer is doing a good job of competing for the spot of my favorite mtg artist.
Despite watching hours of anime weekly I find pretty much all of the Japanese artist ones very unappealing, with very few exceptions.
 
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