Magic: The Gathering’sMurders at Karlov Manor brings us back to the world of Ravnica, however, instead of focusing on the guilds like previous Ravnica sets, this release revolves around solving the crime of a string of murders.
The set’s mechanics reflect this theme by including disguise, suspect, clues, investigate, cases, and collect evidence as mechanics. While typically on the weaker side of the Magic color pie, green looks to have some pretty strong constructed playables in this release.
10Bite Down On Crime
Criminals Are Surprisingly Quite Tasty
While thistype of removalis always fragile due to the chance you get blown out by opposing removal, it’s still removal. If you can cast this after collecting evidence, you’re also casting the spell at a rate cheaper than any we have seen printed before. This will be an important player in Limited.
Don’t confuse this spell with your typical fight spells as Bite Down only has your creature deal damage to the opposing creature. The power boost makes it so that you can trade up even if you don’t have the most powerful creature on the board, and there will certainly be cases where you will be able to swing in for additional damage the same turn.
9Culvert Ambusher
“Culvert” Means A Tunnel Carrying A Stream
What’s better than removal in Limited? A bomb that also doubles as removal. Forcing a creature to block is a roundabout way of taking it off of the battlefield, but it usually works quite nicely if you’ve got a big enough attacker. Culvert Ambusher fits the bill in this respect.
Unfortunately, it shouldn’t be too hard for your opponent to double-block the Ambusher and cause it to die as well. That does require them to have at least five power worth of creatures on the battlefield though. The ability to disguise this card early makes it a whole lot better as it allows you to pick the perfect moment to force an opposing block, largely avoiding the double block situation.
8Hard-Hitting Question
Who Does Number Two Work For?!
Like with Bite Down on Crime, this is a great cost for the effect. Of course, you need a creature with enough power to make use of this removal spell, but green is pretty good at playing sizable creatures. This spell can also hit planeswalkers which is a nice bonus.
Due to its cheap cost, this spell could see some play in Constructed. All of the ward creatures present in Standard at the moment mean that it’s even more likely you’ll have a creature available to deal damage with this.
7Archdruid’s Charm
Variety Is The Spice Of Life
The three modes on this charm give it a lot of versatility. Artifact, enchantment, and creature removal packed in one alongside a tutor that can ramp your mana or place any creature from your library into your hand.
Notably, you don’t need to find a basic land with the tutor effect. That means you could pull out a manland, dual land, or triome to better fix your mana. Of course, the triple green casting cost is kind of restrictive for playing this card in a multicolor mana base. That being said, there are a ton of dual and tricolor lands in Standard at the moment, so it’s not impossible to imagine.
6Pick Your Poison
Talk About Some Potent Gases
Another very cheap cost for the possible effects here. There are a ton of enchantments running around in Standard at the moment including Up the Beanstalk, Leyline Binding, The Cruelty of Gix, and Kumano Faces Kakkazan. You’ve also got important targets for flying creatures such as Deep-Cavern Bat and Raffine, Scheming Seer.
Artifacts are more of a fringe case, but hitting a Subterranean Schooner or even a clue with this spell isn’t too bad. If this sees play in Constructed, it will likely be taking up somesideboard slotsin a mono-green aggro deck. All things considered, it seems like a useful tool for the current metagame.
5Case Of The Locked Hothouse
Is It Hot In Here Or Is It Just Me?
This competes with Big Score as far as mana ramp is concerned. The nice thing about Locked Hothouse is you get to keep using the lands turn after turn, while the treasures you get from Score are a one-time boon.
It does kind of hurt that you don’t get to solve the case until the beginning of the end step you reach seven lands on. If that weren’t the case, you’d get access to the final chapter the very next turn after playing this card assuming you had lands to take advantage of its first chapter. In a slow enough metagame, this is sure to be a potential player though.
4Analyze The Pollen
Beware: Attracts A Lot More Than Bees
This is pretty reminiscent of Traverse the Ulvenwald which is a card that saw a lot of play in Standard. In the early game, this assures that you’ll hit your land drops. In the late game, it essentially serves as an alternative method of drawing your biggest creature threats.
There are some extremely powerful creatures to tutor up with this card at the moment including Atraxa, Grand Unifier / Trumpeting Carnosaur / Etali, Primal Conqueror / and Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant. It’s hard to see a world where this doesn’t find a nice home.
3Axebane Ferox
This is a much worse Questing Beast. That being said, the ward cost on this creature means it will likely get in for some decent damage or remove a creature or two from your opponent’s field before it’s sent to your graveyard.
Unless your opponent is milling themselves, it’s unlikely that they’ll have enough mana cost of cards in their graveyard to remove this creature when you play it early. That means they’re going to have to block it with one of their creatures and then cast removal on it to neatly take care of it. Sounds like a 2-for-1 to us.
2Hide In Plain Sight
Collected Hidden Company.
It’s impossible not to compare this card to Collected Company. Granted, it’s much worse than Collected Company, but that card is absolutely busted. Two creatures with ward 2 for four mana at sorcery speed is still a great deal.
The real kicker is that you can turn your cloaked creatures face up by paying their mana cost. In other words, if you hit a creature that has disguise (or morph) with this card, you can still get the benefit of turning that card face up. That’s some nice synergy, and the ward buff means it’s unlikely your opponent will remove the creature before you turn it face-up.
1Sharp-Eyed Rookie
Not To Worry Captain. They’re On The Case
This is like Tireless Tracker, except you need to play creatures instead of lands to see the benefits. Vigilance is also really nice on a creature that can grow in size so quickly since it prevents your opponent from racing you. Sharp-Eyed Rookie won’t grow as often nor generate as many clues as Tireless Tracker, however, just a single trigger already has you pretty happy.
A 3/3 vigilance for two mana that also replaces itself in the future by paying 2 mana is a card that would see play in just about every aggro and midrange deck build. Expect to see this creature a lot. By the way, it’s also a Human which could very much end up mattering looking at the large selection ofother powerful Humanscurrently in Standard.
