We recently ran a very successful playtest draft, which saw a variety of solid decks in different color combinations, and no overwhelmingly powerful cards. In the end, Rakdos Inspire came out on top, piloted by Garp Garp’s own creator, Juston! His deck hit the ground running with cheap Inspiration generators like Cog and Practice Cactus, along with aggressive threats like Blargg Blargg, before burning opponents out with Crit Disintegrate and Garp Garp, Lord of Bones. The playtest resulted in valuable feedback for this month’s card adjustments, including a few slight nerfs from the winning deck itself.

Without further ado, here are the patch notes for this month:

(NERF) Practice Cactus

Equip 1 → 2

2024 was the Year of the Practice Cactus. It’s been on the watchlist since our very first tests, but quickly became a beloved card among testers, who begged for it to remain unchanged. Now, that fateful day has arrived. Inspire has been a tricky mechanic to evaluate, but this card proved that snowballing Inspiration tokens early in a game can lead to absolute blowouts, with little chance for opponents to fight back effectively. Practice Cactus allowed for a dream curve of any 1-drop (*cough* Cog *cough*) on turn one followed by Practice Cactus + equip on turn two. By bumping the Equip cost up from 1 to 2, this play will now happen a turn later, and opponents will be slightly more rewarded for removing the equipped creature.

(NERF) Ephemeral Unicorn

Now only blinks creatures instead of any nonland permanent

Ephemeral Unicorn is a newer addition to White, designed as a strong build-around effect for blink synergies. However, after seeing it played a few times, it was a bit TOO strong with the ability to blink any nonland permanent you control, especially as a way to restart Sagas. This could combo extremely easily with Fall of the Fell King to destroy a creature every turn for free, indefinitely, which is a bit too oppressive. There are still plenty of creatures in the set with valuable ETBs, and I expect Ephemeral Unicorn to remain a powerhouse for White decks going forward.

(REWORK) Stunning Strike → Attack of Opportunity

Tap/stun combatant → Destroy tapped creature

I was crushed to learn that the name “Stunning Strike” was already taken by a real Magic card. This, along with a gnawing annoyance that the card was too mechanically similar to Frost Dart, meant it was time for a full rework… Introducing Attack of Opportunity! White has also struggled to find effective removal tools, so I replaced small damage and stun counters with the ability to outright destroy a tapped creature. As a minor upside, it offers a scry if cast at sorcery speed, similar to Cloudkill.

(REWORK) Olena, Wanton Abandoner

Triggers on block instead of damage

Olena is a funky card. She’s a classic top-down design, focused on conveying a character whose allegiance flip-flopped across our campaign. But after seeing a player ping her with a Chromatic Orb, steal her, and swing all in the same turn, it was clear that she needed another pass. The new Olena is now a bit tougher, but vulnerable to spot removal. Hopefully, she’ll be a unique punish against open boards, with the potential for some strange side-swapping shenanigans once blockers enter the mix.

(REWORK) Mirror Maiden

Activated ability is now a triggered ability

Mirror Maiden is one of a handful of cards in the set to make Blood tokens, and also has a unique payoff for them. However, it felt odd that using this payoff meant missing out on the reward of the token itself. Instead, she’ll now gain her temporary buff when you use Blood tokens for their intended purpose (or find other ways to sac them, like Child of the Blade or Spitts, Furnace Keeper). This may mean leaving some extra mana up compared to the old design, but it should be more exciting to use.

(REWORK) Tomas, Knight of Thorns

Now cares about being equipped, rather than total number of Equipment

Tomas is a card that always goes unpicked in drafts. While it looks at first glance like an exciting piece of an equipment deck, in practice it requires too much to go right to make much sense. The new design is an attempt to streamline this, trading off scalability for a more self-contained explosion of mana! It still asks the player to choose between tapping for mana or using the the bulky deathtouch body for combat, but now requires fewer extra pieces to get going.

(REWORK) Spectral Bookmark

Now exiles hand face-down

Spectral Bookmark needed a simple oversight to be fixed. For a card that asks you to exile all the cards in you hand, with the option to get them back later, it makes no sense for those cards to be revealed to opponents. Updated text to exile them face down.

(REWORK) Death Dog

3/4 → 4/3

Death Dog is a straightforward common with a decent body for its 4-mana cost. However, the 3/4 statline ended up feeling awkwardly sturdy for a creature with evasion and a death trigger. Flipping it to a 4/3 should make it a bit more aggressive, while also making its abilities feel more relevant.

(REWORK) Ogi

4/3 → 3/4

Ogi‘s case is the opposite of Death Dog’s. It’s become clear that Wizard decks don’t win games with combat damage, but with burn spells. Swapping Ogi’s statline to 3/4 should make him survive longer, so players can get the most out of his Wizard subtype and increased spell damage.

(REWORK) Glimpse the Indigo/Drakebearer

Wait to hoard cards until after they hit the graveyard

Hoard has been one of the less popular mechanics in drafting. Since it exiles cards, it can often feel at odds with death triggers and other graveyard synergies in black. By adjusting the wording of Glimpse the Indigo and Drakebearer to wait until cards hit the graveyard before hoarding them, there should be fewer missed triggers going forward.

(REWORK) Tourmaline, Far Traveler

Changed Scry to Surveil

Tourmaline, the only planeswalker in this set, is designed to play well with both mill and reanimator strategies. Her -2 ability is a panic button to phase her out and dig for the next draw. While this was originally a Scry 2, Surveil 2 makes more sense with her other abilities, potentially slimming the deck and sticking something in the graveyard to reanimate on a future turn.

(BUFF) Boulderized Bandit

Added Haste

It’s important to avoid making colorless spells too generically strong, or else they’ll wind up in every deck regardless of colors. Unfortunately, Boulderized Bandit may have been an over-correction, and was universally disliked in testing. A 3-mana 3/3 seems solid, if uninspiring, but the fact that it makes a Wizard token for the opponent means it loses at least one attack to its own free chump blocker. I’m curious to see how it feels with Haste. This asks the same questions, but does everything a turn earlier—assuming the Wizard blocks the first attack, the Bandit is functionally a 3/3 that enters tapped, but some decks may find creative ways to spin this into an upside!

(BUFF) Lord Barrow//Waif

Reduced transform cost, Waif 3/1 → 3/2

I played it safe with Lord Barrow‘s initial design, since he’s essentially a tutor on a stick. However, I underestimated the built-in cost of waiting a turn before the chance to tap it. With this in mind, it feels reasonable to drop the mana cost of activating him. One tester also pointed out that it felt strange for him to lose toughness once transformed. It’s possible a 3/2 Shroud body is too generous, but it’s worth trying for now.

(BUFF) Battle Porridge

Simplified effect

Battle Porridge recently gained the Food subtype and ability to crack for life gain, but it still didn’t feel worth the card slot. It was also starting to become mentally taxing for such minor effects, with two tap abilities at different speeds, one of which contained another branching choice between first strike or haste. To streamline this, first strike and haste are now bundled together, and can be triggered at instant speed, putting it more in-line with real MtG combat tricks like Fervent Strike. The threat of first strike should pair well with the threat of instant-speed buffs from Inspiration tokens… Whether it’s enough to see play remains to be seen.

(BUFF) Thorny Ballista

Crew 2 → Crew 1

Thorny Ballista has also gone unpicked in playtests so far, despite being a solid tech card to combat flyers. By reducing the Crew cost to 1, the Ballista can now be operated by any of the various token creatures Green decks already love to make, like Crewmates and Goblins. While this seems like a minor change, I expect it will really open up utility for this card to start seeing some inclusion.

(RARITY) Various rarity adjustments

Finally, this year I’ll be paying closer attention to rarities as a potential way to tune cards. Sometimes it’s not the card itself that needs to change, but how often it shows up in packs and games.

Blargg Blargg is a powerful early-game threat, with the ability to crank up the pressure and synergize with other Goblins and Inspiration effects. However, it also feels like exactly what a double-red card wants to be. Rather than tone it down, it’s getting bumped to Rare.

This means Furnace Blast gets to fill in that Uncommon slot. With all the token generation in this set, having an extra copy of a board wipe floating around should be welcome news.

Finally, the “Shops” cycle of legendary card-draw artifacts in each color will be shifted to Uncommons. While I initially included them in the Common slot to ensure that all colors had consistent access to draw, I believe there are now plenty of other value generators across the set, so these ones don’t need to be forced. If anything, games have tended to go long, With only the most aggressive players running out of gas in most cases. Besides, it felt weird to have legendary commons.

And here are the cards filling in those Common slots! I prioritized interaction for the colors that have struggled with that so far, and some low-cost creatures that I’d love to see more often. Adding an extra two copies of each to the set cube means players will see them about twice as often when drafting. We’ve already got another playtest scheduled in the coming weeks, which undoubtedly means more tweaks coming in the future. Stay tuned!