Streets of New Capenna/Commander predictions
We (Chief, Mono White Specialist and Exxaxl, Dimir Crime Lord) have prepared a small article regarding our predictions of what we hope to see (and not see) in New Capenna.
We’re quite close to preview season and some info and cards have already been previewed, so here’s a recap of things we already know:
The set will be focused on 3-color shards:
Obscura - White Blue Black (Esper); Maestros - Blue Black Red (Grixis), Riveteers - Black Red Green(Jund), Cabaretti - Red Green White (Naya) and Brokers - Green White Blue (Bant).
Prerelease packs will be shard-themed with 5 regular draft boosters and 1 ‘seeded’ pack that contains more cards in the color of your chosen shard.
The missing ‘Triomes’ are getting printed for the shard colors - a completion of the Wedge color Triome lands we saw in Ikoria. We’ve seen that these lands have cycling but cycling has been confirmed to not be a dedicated mechanic in the set.
Regular printings of 3rd party IP ‘Stranger Things’ cards have already been previewed at this point. These cards will appear in ‘The List’ (a rotating list of cards that can be found in 25% of Set Boosters).
A new Ascendancy cycle for each shard will be present in the set.
Elspeth and Ob Nixilis are confirmed to be on this plane as seen on some of the promo images and packaging.
Full art basics are present in the set and can be found in booster packs pretty much the same way the Neon Dynasty Ukiyo-E lands could be found (roughly 1 in every 3 packs for regular draft boosters).
With the recap out of the way, let’s get to the actual predictions:
Chief, activating his Scroll Rack, predicts for the regular standard set:
1. It seems likely that crime families will utilize class creature types as a heavy theme, even if it’s not strictly supported with noncreature cards. I expect that Rogue and Assassin will be common creature types that can appear across different crime families. We’ll probably see the use of Bard for cabaret musicians and artists in the Cabaretti and Maestros respectively. I also expect that we’ll see Wizards for the Obscura, Artificers for the Riveteers, and Advisors for the Brokers.
2. We already have explicit confirmation that Elspeth Tirel and Ob Nixilis will be in this set. I can’t imagine Elspeth being any color other than mono-white, but I suspect that Ob Nixilis will be aligned with the Maestros and that he may adopt at least one additional color than we’ve previously seen on his cards.
It seems like having three planeswalkers in a Standard set is quite commonplace, so my guess for the third planeswalker is Davriel Cane. There’s a character on the art for one of the theme booster packs that closely resembles him, so this is an educated guess.
3. Based on the pictures of the Floating World Secret Lair Drop, the Hideaway mechanic is receiving new templating that assigns a specific number to the mechanic rather than always locking it at 4. This feels like it’s being done deliberately, which tells me that there’s a good chance that Hideaway is coming back in a new set. Given the secretive nature of organized crime, Hideaway feels like an excellent fit for Streets of New Capenna. If it doesn’t appear in this set, it feels like it’s almost guaranteed to show up again in the near future!
秘匿 - Hitoku - can be seen with a number next to it, where this previously only appeared in the reminder text, making the first line of text on the card say ‘Hideaway 4’
4. We know that Angels created the city of New Capenna long before it was taken over by the crime families. We’ve even seen them represented in mediums such as hood ornaments and statues in official art for the set.
I expect that we’ll see some Angel creatures within the set, but that they will probably only be represented on a few cards. I don’t think that they’ll be aligned with any of the crime families other than maybe the Brokers, as angels tend to be aligned with order even when they’re not specifically working for good. In any event, I’m hoping to see angels with powerful static abilities rather than keyword soup beaters.
In regards to the commander precons:
5. Much like we saw in Commander 2020 when it was released alongside Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths, I’m expecting that we’ll see new Partner With commanders in the precons. I would guess that each partner pair would collectively make up all three colors from their respective crime family. I really enjoy Partner With commanders from a design perspective, as having two commanders that work closely together feels much more flavorful than pairing two commanders with no story relation.
Exxaxl, pondering his Mesmeric Orb, predicts for the regular standard set:
1. Some strong tribal supported creature groups. Elves, Demons, Angels, Goblins, etc.
Goblins in MTG fit the theme of ‘crime family’ well with Krenko having cards such as ‘Mob Boss’ and ‘Tin Street Kingpin - this tribe has a lot of ‘minions’ and ‘expendable workforce’ where it doesn’t matter how you get there, so long the goal is reached.
We know Krenko is not a planeswalker but Daretti is - Daretti cares a lot about artifacts and Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty came with decent artifact support, so continuing to design cards that synergize well with artifacts for the standard environment makes sense.
It would feel strange not to see anything in regards to Daretti, who is a master artificer that’s red aligned and secondary in black so he would fit nicely in the Riveteers theme.
2. A return to a strong standard environment mechanic. Exalted and Unearth are two fun abilities I hope to see more of. Both of these were present on Alara where we originally saw these shards so I’m hoping to see more cards with those mechanics soon.
3. Dedicated 3 color legendary creatures that all have a mana value of 3 or more in their shard colors.
While I get that this set is printed for standard, the presence of ‘more legendary creatures’ in regular sets is something everyone’s been noticing the past two years.
I prefer my commanders to have their color identity in their casting cost over in the ability box. I can’t put into words why this is the case, but finding out a commanders color identity halfway down the card because of an ability they have just doesn’t feel as ‘fun’ to me as locking the color identity in the actual mana cost.
4. I hope to see a cycle of cards equivalent to the Charm cycle already printed like Abzan Charm or Esper Charm but themed nicely to the New Capenna environment. They don’t have to be named ‘~ Charm’ to fill that slot, but a 3 mana value in shard-colors instant card with three modes where you choose one would be very nice to see.
In regards to the commander precons:
I don’t really want to be negative but I’m afraid we’re yet again going to see a bunch of ‘lazy fillers’ that make no thematic sense in the deck. I get that there is a need for reprints to happen at some point, but I’m quite bored of seeing the following printed into precons, some of them even back to back:
- Zetalpa, Primal Dawn (3 precons)
- Talrand, Sky Summoner (4 precons)
- Butcher of Malakir (5 precons)
- Charmbreaker Devils (4 precons)
- Champion of Lambholdt (3 precons)
I’d like the precons that release next to the regular standard set to be a little more in flavor. It’s always a small let down when you see brand new cards printed for those precons with art, references or flavor text clearly depicting the plane they’re meant to be on and then a random elder dinosaur from Ixalan or vampire from Zendikar gets forced in yet again. If there was some variety in between them maybe I’d care less about this, but we really don’t need to see these in every other precon.
Let’s finish the article with what we hope New Capenna will not do:
Chief hopes we don’t see:
Overly forced references like existing gangster and film noir topics (The Untouchables, The Godfather, etc.)
I don’t mind references like the ‘You Are Already Dead’ in Neon Dynasty, but I have limits to how far a reference can go. I don't want it to feel like memes took precedence over quality of references.
Exxaxl hopes we don’t see:
Pinstripe suits, trilby and fedora hats, Tommy gun aesthetics, references to Al Capone or prohibition. The cliche ‘Italian mobster’ vibe present in (older) popular media feels quite ‘not of this age’ to me. There’s a thin line between a ‘good reference’ and ‘ugh, really’ that’s hard to put into words. I think Chief and I are sort of hoping for the same things not to happen.
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