The upcoming MTG set Outlaws of Thunder Junction seems pretty pushed, with all kinds of high powered cards that look set shake up the meta. After scrutinizing the set, here are our picks for the most impressive cards
It’s impossible to cover every single good card from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, but in trying to find the best MTG cards from the set, we’ve taken into account multiple different MTG formats. Below, you’ll find some strong Standard cards, a couple of excellent MTG commanders, and a few picks we think may stand up in older formats.
Magda, The Hoardmaster
Any red deck with decent interaction can make good use of Magda, The Hoardmaster. She’ll effortlessly make treasure tokens that will help power up your early game, and if you’ve got no use for the additional mana, you’ll be able to turn those treasures into 4/4 dragons that can attack immediately.
We’re not quite sure where Magda will fit, but she seems sure to have a role in some Standard decks, and looks fab in Commander as well. Committing a crime just seems so easy, requiring almost no work to trigger regularly, and this is a great payoff for it.
High Noon
A stax piece that shuts down some of the most powerful strategies in Magic: The Gathering like MTG Cascade or Storm, High Noon is going to be super infuriating to face off against. You might be able to do something using plot to set up spells, then sacrificing this card to unload, but the more likely use case is slotting it into the sideboard for times when it’ll be really impactful.
Being able to blat someone in the face for five damage is not bad either. You could even play High Noon in EDH, if you want everyone to hurt you.
Three Steps Ahead
A three mana MTG counterspell is distinctly unimpressive, but with a clone and a draw spell bolted on top, it gets a lot more promising. Bit of a spoiler here; the spree cards are all amazing, and you’ll find a few of them on this list. Yes, they can be a bit expensive for the effect you get, but they offer unrivaled flexibility that’s hard to say no to.
Great Train Heist
Great Train Heist gives you so many great options. The full version is buffing your team, giving you an extra combat step, and netting you a ton of treasures for making contact with the enemy. But I can foresee situations where you might want to cast every combination of these three effects, and being able to plug in as much mana as you choose to access exactly the effects you want is amazing.
The rate isn’t bad for what you get, either, and the Great Train Heist will be useful at every stage of a game, whether you’re using it for an early mana advantage, as a combat trick (offensively or defensively), or as a source of extra damage to close out a game.
Pest Control
Bye bye, everyone’s Sol Rings! Pest Control is a board wipe with loads of good targets it can hit, and a spell that hoses token strategies so hard that it may put an end to one of the current best MTG Arena decks, Boros Convoke. Obviously, Pest Control is superb on the sideboard, but it might even see some play in best-of-one games, since the fail-case, cycling for two, is hardly a disaster.
In Modern, it has the added advantage of providing a discard option for Solitude or Grief, and if Crashing Footfalls decks were still around, it’d be bad news for them too.
Final Showdown
I would not play a six mana board wipe that only hits creatures. I would not play a two mana protection spell. But I’ll sure as hell try slamming a card that has both modes into my deck. In Commander, you’ll be able to make good use of Final Showdown, paying six to destroy all creatures, one more when there’s something important you want to protect, and one more when you want to get rid of some pesky indestructible stuff too.
The instant speed is nice here, and the option to pay just two mana to save your commander or an essential combo piece, is lovely. That third ability, making all creatures lose their abilities, might have some pretty interesting uses too.
Goldvein Hydra
Like its red cousin, Shivan Devastator, Goldvein Hydra is a hasty creature that can come down at any size and smash your opponent in the face right away. It swaps devastator’s wings for vigilance and trample, a pretty good trade-off all things considered.
What makes our eyebrows shoot through the roof, however, is that Goldvein Hydra makes treasure tokens equal to its power when it dies. The baseline effect is good, you get your mana back, but in EDH this can easily become a game-winning play.
Whether you employ +1/+1 counter doublers or token doublers, Goldvein can easily bleed a disgusting amount of treasure when it shuffles off this mortal coil, setting you up to win the game in one very big turn.
One caveat, is that lots of Thunder Junction cards are quite careful about making these treasure tokens enter tapped, preventing treasure cards from being quite so explosive.
Slickshot Show-Off
The greatest prowess two-drop is here! Slickshot Show-Off is destined for great things in Standard, and perhaps it’ll have an impact on older formats like Pioneer or even Modern too. We anticipate this spell-slinging bird playing fantastically in a theoretical Izzet prowess deck, where it can provide fast and evasive pressure.
The plot ability is interesting too, perhaps allowing you to save the card for the right moment, where you have spells in hand that can make the most of the prowess MTG keyword. If you’re an MTG Arena player, get ready to see an awful lot of this guy.
Obeka, Splitter of Seconds
Every set has a ton of legendary creatures these days, but there’s often one or two outliers, cards that make EDH players sit up, take notice, and possible salivate.
In Outlaws of Thunder Junction, that card is Obeka, Splitter of Seconds. The ability to gain a second upkeep step is just so tantalizing, so ripe with promise, that players are rushing to prepare decks for her to lead. We’ve already seen a few different cards spike in price, in fact, as people prepare to play her.
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Source: Wargamer
