Spoiler season for upcoming Magic: The Gathering set Streets of New Capenna may not officially begin until April 7, but will that stop Wizards of the Coast from dishing up new cards early for us to pore over? It will not. Thursday brought a particularly tasty serving of MTG spoilers: a trio of new creature cards depicting three demonic crime family leaders of Streets of New Capenna’s factions.
Approaching these Legendary demon spoilers in decreasing size order, first up is Lord Xander, The Collector. This demon vampire noble is the leader of the art aficionado assassin Maestros family. He’s a mighty 6/6 creature costing seven mana in black/blue/red colours. As for his special abilities, they don’t exactly scream ‘collector’. Xander’s all about making the opponent lose things, discarding half their cards when he entered the battlefield, milling half their library when he attacks, and sacrificing half their permanents when he dies.
The card seems too costly to make it big in Standard, but is surely destined to be one of Streets of New Capenna’s best MTG Commanders. Be warned, though, that this looks to be one of those Commanders that will make every other player at the table hate you just a little bit.
Next up we have Jetmir, Nexus of Revels, a 5/4 cat demon in red/white/green colours, who’s the head of the Cabaretti. This party-loving Streets of New Capenna faction is all about bringing people together, so naturally Jetmir’s abilities are themed around playing lots of creatures.
The more creatures you have, the more Jetmir will buff them: an increase in power and a new keyword ability is unlocked for your whole battlefield when you have three, six, or nine creatures on the field. Jetmir only really fits one kind of strategy, decks that go wide with lots of small tokens, but he seems like an excellent tool for that deck.
Finally, we have the sphinx demon Raffine, Scheming Seer. Demons and sphinxes usually pack a lot of power in Magic, but Rafinne starts surprisingly small, and reflecting that, costs only one white, one blue, and one black mana to cast.
Rafinne’s card reveals our first new keyword for the Streets of New Capenna set: Connive. This lets Raffine loot (drawing and discarding cards) and then gain +1/+1 counters equal to the number of nonland cards discarded. They can do this once for every attacking creature, so while Raffine starts off a mere 1/4, they’ll quickly grow into a terrifying flying threat.
The cards were unveiled on YouTube by popular EDH Magic Channel The Command Zone, in a video titled Criminal Histories. This video was sponsored by Wizards of the Coast, and features interviews with Streets of New Capenna’s creative team, along with a bunch of artwork from the set.
If you’re keen to know everything there is to know about the upcoming set – it’s getting quite close now – check out our Streets of New Capenna guide for all the tasty details we’ve been able to drum up.
Source: Wargamer
