After a full year of playtesting in 2024, it’s time to revisit this set’s unique mechanics to see what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to change.

Hoard

The hoard is a shared pool of cards in exile. To hoard a card, exile that card and put a hoard counter on it.

Hoard is a flavorful mechanic – Dragons pilfering away cards to use them later – but it’s been a tricky one to pin down. Some players shy away from it when they learn that any player can potentially tap into the Hoard, but the bigger challenge has been balancing a mechanic that threatens infinite value loops. Ideally, this mechanic wants to play with value-centric decks, either grindy midrange beatdown or full-blown control. Unfortunately, it’s been almost completely untouched in playtest drafts in favor of more straightforward gameplans.

What Worked

The only Hoard cards to successfully see play have been the ones with self-contained, proactive effects.

Several dragons in the set with variations of the same effect: hoarding away all cards of a certain type from all graveyards when they enter, cheating those cards into play when they deal combat damage, and flying + another keyword to make them reliable attackers! While these cards can benefit from other cards (eg. mill effects to get extra cards into the graveyard, or other ways to access the cards once hoarded), their ability to function on their own make them easy to include in almost any deck.

• Byss, Indigo Tyrant is the clear standout as the quintessential bomb mythic of the set. At 7 mana, she’s tied for most expensive card in the set, but once she hits the board it usually spells doom for her foes.
• Far-Flung Dragon is much less splashy but still feels good in Golgari and Jund decks. It’s much easier to remove than Byss but usually manages to ramp out a few extra lands or nab a favorable trade before it goes.
• Dragonform only showed up a few times in our 2024 testing, but was very strong when it did. It was notably great at bringing back Sagas, but even just giving a creature flying and hexproof was usually worth the cost of admission. It struggled with the same core issues as other Concentration Auras, so this one may now be even stronger with the recent changes to that mechanic.
• Unlike the rest of this cycle, Frara, the Chromatic went largely unpicked. The 5-color cost proved too daunting for playtesters to run her, but I like her place in the set as a challenging build-around… One day, a deck will line up with the proper mana-fixing or find a sneaky way to cheat her into play!

Birth of a Dragon was the other standout Hoard card of the year, a Saga that felt great to play in most any Rakdos deck. This one plays out like a less busted Fable of the Mirror Breaker, with the first turns setting up extra card selection and ramp in the form of Treasures, and culminating in the perfect creature to pay it all off. Testers have responded very positively to the Dragon token. It’s a reasonable body, and unlike the aforementioned Dragons who all cheat out hoarded cards of a certain type, this one can play anything from the hoard as long as the player can pay for it. Overall, it’s a very versatile card that feels strong but never overwhelming. It’s in a great spot!

What Didn’t Work

Aside from the Dragons themselves, the rest of the Hoard cards were too opaque and durdly to form a compelling strategy. The original intention was for the Dragons to be the big payoffs, and everything else to support them with ways to hoard additional cards or the ability to access the hoard in smaller bursts. However, it’s now clear that for the mechanic to succeed, players need more consistent payoffs than a couple of rares and mythics, or else they won’t bite at all. As it stands, there are just too many hoops to jump through. Much of this can be blamed on….

The Labyrinth Lurker. Rewind to 2023. The very first Unwell Kingdom playtest was an unorthodox one, a game of sealed Two-Headed Giant instead of our usual draft 1-v-1s. The intention was to ease into the set by building decks from our own 6 packs of cards, and then having a teammate to further rely on, but it made for some wonky data. In any case, one outcome was clear. Labyrinth Lurker absolutely crushed the rest of the field and it was not close.

The winning deck went all-in on the hoard thanks to this 2-mana 2/2 common with a similar ability to Dragon tokens, allowing cards to be played directly from the hoard once per turn. However, this one also mana-fixed automatically, and the “once per turn” clause wasn’t included opponent’s turns as well. This was a sobering look at what the Hoard could do when it was overtuned. The game got completely locked down thanks to some hoarded counterspells and an endless one-sided flood of card advantage. Simply put, it did too much for too little. It gave near unrestricted access to hoarded cards on a body that was cheap to play, competitively statted, and could stack with multiple copies.

For these reasons, the Lurker was cut from the set completely and I was much more wary about the hoard effects that remained.

Broker’s Negotiations was a more fiddly way to interact with the hoard, a 3-mana enchantment that could hoard cards from the graveyard or play cards once they’re hoarded. Unlike the Labyrinth Lurker though, this demands an additional cost both ways, discarding a card from hand or sacrificing a nonland permanent respectively. If other hoard cards saw more play, I think this one might actually open up some interesting lines, but those extra costs make it difficult to play without support. The payoff is also difficult to assess at a glance. When I see Broker’s Negotiations get passed up in drafts, I expect most players’ eyes glaze over at all the text before they pick a more straightforward card.

Frara’s Scale actually functions at about the power level it should, a 3-cost mana rock that taps for any color with minor/niche upside. This feels like a plan B, a glue piece to ensure a Hoard deck can still function even if it whiffs on its star cards, and that’s okay. Like the Negotiations, it’s waiting to support star cards that just don’t exist in this set, so it feels weak as a result.

What Needs to Change

In order for hoard decks to work, they need something to build around that doesn’t require a rare or mythic Dragon. The Indigo Herald is the perfect candidate for this, so it’s getting redesigned to become a signpost uncommon for this mechanic.

Previously, it was a mill card that hoped to get more hits into graveyards for Byss, Indigo Tyrant or Dragonform. However, this was one extra step too many, so now its role will be the premiere way to directly access hoarded cards! It now allows players to cast noncreature spells from the hoard without worrying about mana colors. Labyrinth Lurker was overwhelming, but now it will live on in The Indigo Herald! Being limited to noncreature spells and being much harder to cast than the monocolor 2-drop.

In addition to giving grindy control decks extra gas, I’m very excited to see what combos this enables, especially when paired with Glimpse the Indigo to send cards straight back to the hoard when played…
Bug in a Jar + Child of the Blade = infinite 1/1 tokens!
Wishka Warrior + Bonus Action = infinite Inspiration tokens!
Spitts, Furnace Keeper + Goblin Berries = infinite damage pings!

None of these will be easy to pull off, especially in draft. But knowing the potential now exists might give players reason to reconsider Hoard cards before passing them up again.

Finally, speaking of Glimpse the Indigo, there have been a few times where it and Drakebearer created awkward interactions because they forced ALL cards that hit the graveyard to be added to the hoard. By updating both of these cards’ effects to be optional, they may find a home in more graveyard-focused decks. This is especially true for Glimpse, since it’s the most straightforward burst of mill in the set.

Hopefully, these changes will give Hoard a new lease on life by giving it a more obvious gameplan and giving cards the flexibility to play better alongside other mechanics in the set.