Our Top 10 Cards of Streets of New Capenna
In this weeks article, Chief and Exxaxl talk about their 10 favorite cards from Streets of New Capenna (SNC) and the New Capenna Commander precons (NCC). Put on your pinstripe suit and sit down for some rhino hors-d'œuvres, Kitt Kanto’s performance is about to start.
Chief - SNC:
Giada, Font of Hope:
At long last, the prayers of those who wanted another mono-white angel tribal commander have been answered! Lyra Dawnbringer is cool, but I’ve never quite felt motivated to sit down and play a deck with her at the helm because she feels quite similar to a lot of the nonlegendary angels in the 99.
Giada is a 2/2 for 2 mana with 2 keywords, but she also does a lot more. She can attack with flying and vigilance and then use her mana ability to help bring in reinforcements that will receive +1/+1 counters equal to the number of other angels that you control! This can quickly get out of hand.
You can tell that getting Giada right was a labor of love for the Magic R&D team, as they put a lot into the card without making her feel overpowered or oppressive to deal with. I especially love that she can come down early to support your more expensive angels rather than competing with them in the mana curve. I hope to take to the skies with an army of angels led by Giada in the near future!
Maestros Ascendancy:
There’s a lot to love about the Maestros, but this card is my absolute favorite of their designs. Maestros Ascendancy functions a lot like Kess, Dissident Mage, allowing you to cast an instant or sorcery from your graveyard on each of your turns. This scales extremely well with any power level as it relies on the strength of the spells that you’re casting.
Whether you’re casting Damnation for the second time because your opponent was packing a Heroic Intervention the first time or you’re attempting to power out a game-winning Ad Nauseam after surveilling it to your graveyard off of Dragon’s Rage Channeler earlier in the game, Maestros Ascendancy is sure to give you a lot of value for just three mana. While I actually don’t have any decks using Grixis colors, I’m looking forward to seeing how people put this card to use in Commander.
Professional Face-Breaker:
I feel obligated to preface this one by mentioning that although she has my favorite card name in years, this card was chosen for my top 10 based on game mechanics alone. Treasure got a lot of love in SNC, and this card is one of the strongest treasure cards this side of Dockside Extortionist.
Professional Face-Breaker seems like a great fit for a deck featuring Tymna the Weaver or Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator and a partner with red, being an evasive body that can create a treasure for each player that you hit during combat and allowing you to sacrifice treasures for impulsive draw. She’ll also be great friends with Grim Hireling.
I expect to see her a lot in decks that can turn creatures sideways, including a deck from my in-person playgroup that’s built around Grenzo, Havoc Raiser and a suite of supporting goons that allow him to literally rob his opponents blind while generating an insane amount of value.
Rumor Gatherer:
The latest iteration on Mentor of the Meek breaks the mold in a few interesting ways. While she caps you out at one card draw per turn and only for the second creature that enters the battlefield, scrying for each other creature that comes in can be quite powerful. She also doesn’t actually care how big the creatures are, which is definitely a welcome change for white.
It’s pretty easy to create multiple creature tokens at the same time in white, so you’ll likely be able to consistently scry and draw cards every turn cycle in the right deck. It’s nice to know that large creatures and bigger tokens such as those made by Luminarch Ascension or Entreat the Angels will still trigger her ability.
I’m planning to do a lot of digging and drawing cards with Rumor Gatherer in my Adeline, Resplendent Cathar deck, where I can reliably trigger her ability at least three times on each of my turns. Being able to scry away unwanted cards is also a huge boon for decks that use Scroll Rack and Sensei’s Divining Top, both of which are cards that white decks commonly use to get decent card selection. For an uncommon, she offers quite a lot of utility that can really help out white in the card advantage department. I’m also in love with the tiny zoo animals in the art!
Vivien on the Hunt:
I’m rarely wowed by planeswalkers, but I’m definitely a fan of this one. This time around, Vivien is on the hunt for creatures in your deck. There are a number of possibilities here, ranging from value creatures such as Beast Whisperer to finishers such as Craterhoof Behemoth.
You can even use Vivien as a makeshift Birthing Pod effect with cards such as Planebound Accomplice and Felidar Guardian, allowing you to easily assemble powerful combos. While her other abilities are probably less interesting, being able to bring creatures to hand and mill away unneeded cards or making a 4/4 rhino token to protect herself are both also worthy of consideration.
I’m expecting that we’ll see a lot of hijinks based around her first ability and I’m sure we’ll only get more cards that allow you to do interesting things with Vivien in the future.
Chief - NCC:
Bennie Bracks, Zoologist:
Bennie Bracks looks like he would get along great with the aforementioned Rumor Gatherer, as they’re both mono-white elves with a passion for zoology and drawing cards. One thing that really sets Bennie apart from his peers is that he has convoke, which means that a clever token deck can possibly even cast him for free!
He also triggers at each end step if you’ve created any token at all, which definitely makes me want to play him alongside persistent token generators such as Smothering Tithe or Tendershoot Dryad that can produce tokens every turn. While I’ll probably be playing Bennie in my Adeline, Resplendent Cathar deck, it feels like he will also be at home in multicolor decks helmed by commanders such as Rhys the Redeemed and Ghave, Guru of Spores to churn out consistent value every turn.
Boxing Ring:
Green has never been great at removing creatures, but a two-drop artifact that allows your creatures to fight enemy creatures and then create a treasure if they fought this turn is a decent way to help clear the way for your big stompy bodies to get through for combat damage.
The important thing is that your creatures can only fight those with the same mana value (read: weight class), so you will probably need ‘boxers ’with a variety of different mana values if you plan to host many prize fights using this card. The strict requirements for fighting with Boxing Ring help keep it from feeling oppressive, but the effect is still likely to trigger several times during the average Commander game.
I think that this card is great for utility in decks such as Neyith of the Dire Hunt and Grothama, All-Devouring that care about fighting, but I also consider this an amazing top-down design from a flavor perspective. There’s also a hidden synergy here with the new shield counters, allowing for some cross-family collaboration between the Brokers and the Riveteers.
Mari, the Killing Quill:
This is an interesting one. Offering some cross-tribal benefits for assassins, mercenaries, and rogues, Mari seems like an excellent support card for Etrata, the Silencer due to her ability to exile enemy creatures with hit counters on them when they die.
Of course you can also just run Mari in the command zone, which is honestly a lot more interesting to me. She allows you to draw cards by removing hit counters from creatures in exile whenever your assassins, mercenaries, and rogues deal combat damage to a player, effectively allowing them to collect on the rewards for carrying out these contracts.
I’m definitely a fan of lords that support multiple creature types, but I can’t help but wonder if we’ll be seeing a resurgence of the mercenary creature type sometime soon. The majority of mercenaries were printed during the Masques block over 20 years ago, and it’d be nice to see them make their return.
Smuggler’s Share:
This is my absolute favorite card from both SNC and NCC. I’m a huge fan of white enforcing fairness by taxing opponents for greedy plays, and Smuggler’s Share does exactly that. At each end step, you get to do two things. The first thing you’ll do is draw a card for each opponent who drew more than one card this turn. This is extremely easy to trigger with commanders such as Kraum, Ludevic’s Opus and cards like Rhystic Study being so commonplace. It will also hit sorcery speed cantrips, wheels, and a variety of other things.
After you’re done drawing cards, you get to create a treasure for each opponent who had multiple lands enter the battlefield this turn. This can be the result of cards that allow you to play extra lands such as Azusa, Lost But Seeking, green land ramp such as Cultivate, opponents playing fetchlands and then cracking them in the same turn, or even your own Path to Exile targeting an opponent’s creature when it swings at you during combat after they’ve already played a land.
This card is sure to be impactful in almost every Commander game, but it feels like it will be a major headache for decks helmed by commanders like Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait that draw and extra cards every turn. While it requires you to track and remember specific things each turn in order to resolve the trigger in the end step, it does remove the need to disrupt the middle of someone’s turn to announce triggers in the manner required by cards such as Rhystic Study or Smothering Tithe. Smuggler’s Share will definitely test your memory and concentration, but the payoffs are also very good.
Spiteful Repossession:
Land ramp is quite commonplace in Commander, but there aren’t always many ways to fight back against it outside of blowing up lands. Spiteful Repossession can be used to deal damage to opponents who control more lands than you proportionate to the disparity in land count. Then it creates treasures equal to the damage dealt.
This definitely has some synergy with damage modifiers such as Fiery Emancipation and Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, but I can’t help but feel like the most diabolic use for this card would be alongside Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and Squandered Resources or Rain of Filth. That’s absolutely disgusting and I love it!
Spiteful Repossession can be as fair or as unfair as you want it to be, which makes it a real highlight for me. At its floor, this card can probably hit most of your opponents for a few damage and make a handful of treasure in almost every Commander game. I’m definitely always in favor of cards that can punish the prevalence of green ramp and this one offers a tangible reward in the form of your own temporary mana acceleration.
Exxaxl - SNC:
A Little Chat:
This Instant speed 2 mana ‘draw’ spell is likely better than it originally seems. It puts the card directly into your hand, which circumvents drawing restrictions such as Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils - and with that also doesn’t count towards other ‘catch up’ cards like the Smuggler’s Share mentioned earlier. The threshold for Casualty only being 1 means you can sacrifice just about any other creature you control to filter 2 twice and put 2 cards into your hand. It’s essentially a Deliberate that can copy itself.
A Little Chat will likely be useful in spellslinger token decks with expendable bodies. If you’re running Talrand, Sky Summoner; Young Pyromancer; Murmuring Mystic; Saheeli, Sublime Artificer or The Locust God, this card should definitely be considered. Add a Storm-Kiln artist to that mix and now you filtered 2 and drew 1 card twice completely free!
Corpse Explosion:
A selective boardwipe for 3 mana at the cost of exiling a body from your graveyard seems like good value to me. Up to this point, outside of Blasphemous Act - which, let’s be fair, never costs 9 mana - your options for ‘cheap’ wipes in Rakdos were quite limited. It also hits each planeswalker, which is an uncommon effect to see full stop.
Reanimator/sacrifice decks are quite common in these colors so reaching the threshold of a decent body in the graveyard shouldn’t be all that difficult. The abundance of graveyard tutors in black also provides you with the option of casting a card like Entomb to ensure a big enough creature gets exiled in case you need to emergency wipe - or maybe your opponents just removed some of your bigger threats and you feel it’s payback time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).
Evolving Door:
I’ll admit this card is by no means strong - and that’s ok. EDH doesn’t have to be about the strongest options all the time. ‘What if we printed a slower Birthing Pod that counts colors and you get to cast them from Exile instead of making them enter for free’ sounds like just the right amount of hoops to jump through to make the card not an auto include in every deck.
The multicolor aspect of this will make it favor three or more color decks and is definitely something to consider if you’re playing Jegantha, The Wellspring or Niv-Mizzet Reborn. I like that it just counts the amount of colors, and not the mana value, allowing you to turn your early bodies into more impactful multicolor creatures late game.
Turn your Llanowar Elves into Deathrite Shaman into The Mimeoplasm, or use it to get rid of your own Collector Ouphe and find Ruric Thar, The Unbowed instead. Let me know on our Discord which weird creature lines you come up with when you decide to play this card.
Lord Xander, the Collector:
Xander is probably one of the first Grixis commanders to appeal to me. This card felt wronged the moment it got revealed - the go to “OMG BAN BROKEN WTF THIS CARD IS NOT FUN”-squad had to have another tantrum on social media when this card got previewed - it reminded me a lot of when Tergrid released (0.295% of decks on EDHrec, by the way).
Xander feels like the type of commander where the person with the loudest voice or worst hot takes will target you simply for showing up and make sure to let you know they hate you ‘because YOU chose to play that deck’ even though they’ve likely never played against it before. Dogpiling on a person based on commander choice never made sense to me and probably never will - something something threat assessment.
He’s 7 mana, doesn’t have haste and most of his game plan should be quite telegraphed ahead of time. There are only so many key pieces to make Xander super impactful, and those cards have been known for quite some time now - cards like Bruvac, the Grandiloquent, Waste Not, or Conjurer’s Closet to name a few.
The card feels quite slow and in my eyes doesn't deserve the hatred he received when getting revealed. If you’re scared one of your friends will show up with Xander-discard-flicker tribal, if they haven’t already shown up with Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger; Tergrid, God of Fright or Nath of the Gilt-Leaf before, they likely also won’t care enough to make a deck in that style now.
Scheming Fence: I will forever call this card Gomez Addams so help me - I like the options this card provides. You have to choose a nonland permanent, which means ‘that’s on the board somewhere’ - you can’t just name ‘any card in MTG’s history’ like with Pithing Needle or Sorcerous Spyglass, though those don’t stop mana abilities, which Scheming Fence does.
Being able to not just prevent a strong ability from being activated on your opponent’s side but granting you access to those abilities through Scheming Fence is very in line with the Azorious ‘I lay down the rules, I am the law’ gameplay. Strip someone’s sac outlet or token maker, or prevent your opponents from comboing out with Basalt/Grim Monolith.
If your friends can’t stop playing Kenrith, The Returned King; Sisay, Weatherlight Captain or Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy at the helm, or regularly uses cards like Razaketh, the Foulblooded; Dauthi Voidwalker; Ashnod’s Altar; Sensei’s Divining Top, Scroll Rack or Birthing Pod , you too can play those cards for the small price of one blue and one white - and prevent them from getting the effect on top. You can’t have your cake and eat it too - but you can steal your friend’s cake and eat it all.
I’m looking forward to a situation where someone’s playing Brago, King Eternal or Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and they pick what they want Scheming Fence to be every turn over and over. I’m sure casting a kicked Rite of Replication on Scheming Fence is not the most impactful play you can do, but it will certainly be funny.
It’s worth mentioning Scheming Fence enters as, meaning it’s not a triggered ability, so people can’t sacrifice/destroy/exile the permanent you’re choosing, just like with Spark Double. The card also doesn’t target, so it gets around hexproof, protection and shroud.
Exxaxl - NCC:
Body Count:
While at face value this card is 3 mana, it can be reduced to 1 thanks to the spectacle cost and it’s instant speed on top. You don’t have to be the source of that life loss either. Any opponent losing any life makes Body Count cost 1 mana. To me Body Count feels like ‘fixed’ version of Liliana’s Standard Bearer and if you’re already on the aristocrat, extort, lifedrain or sacrifice gameplan, being able to draw cards at instant speed for 1 mana is quite high value.
I’ll have to find a slot in my Araumi of the Dead Tide deck for this as just from the encore ability alone, it’ll draw me 3 cards minimum, assuming nothing else died on my board that turn. The fact that creatures with encore come out hasted means most of the time one or more opponents will have lost life that turn as well.
Change of Plans:
I’m quite happy to see phasing come back here and there every so often - Gavin touched on this mechanic briefly in our Adventures of the Forgotten Realm AMA. I also really like connive, so a card that has both phasing and connive speaks to me a lot.
Sometimes you don't want to counterspell a boardwipe - one might be necessary on the current board state, but that doesn't meant you want to lose your board. 'Draw a bunch of cards, discard a bunch of cards, then grow your board for next turn and also some creatures you control phase out' seems like fun design on one card.
At minimum you'll be paying 3 mana to save your commander, draw and discard a card which feels like a fair deal for its mana cost and I can see many Dimir graveyard, discard, reanimator or Izzet/Grixis wheel deck slot this card for it’s instant speed potential.
Life Insurance:
It’s been a long while since we saw a useful extort card outside of Crypt Ghast and Blind Obedience. I understand why it specifies nontoken creatures because this card would get out of hand fast if it didn’t - decks with Teysa Karlov and Anointed Procession getting more treasure payoffs will certainly make those decks a lot faster. It’s also quite good to see extort in Orzhov colors - people will finally have to stop asking what extort’s color identity is (try to play Blind Obedience in a mono white deck and experience it for yourself).
I don’t know who at WOTC is addicted to depicting people coughing up coins, but we’re getting closer to ‘choking on currency tribal’ decks every few sets. Greed, Smothering Tithe, Monologue Tax and now Life Insurance. They don’t even sound like a bad idea in the same deck either. Add Revel in Riches and Pitiless Plunderer and - right, I’ll make a deck with that in mind at some point.
Protection Racket:
This card can be strong or hinder you and it’s the duality of the effect that I like. This will be right at home in decks with high mana value cards and will likely play quite nice in slower decks without all the zero to one drop ramp/rituals or low cost interaction. Protection Racket feels like the type of card that can shoot yourself in the foot from time to time, but when you do get to put 3 extra cards in your hand mid to late game when life totals are low it feels so good.
There’s no priority pass in between repetitions by the way - you reveal one card for the first opponent in turn rotation, they decide on exile or hand, after which you reveal the next card for opponent two and so on, until all opponents have chosen. This means no ‘in response’ to putting one of the cards into your hand while moving on to the next opponent.
Make sure to play this card correctly and at the right time! You don’t want to put this on your battlefield if you’re already behind in lands and ramp because those are minimal costs to pay for your opponents to deny you known card advantage.
Seize the Spotlight:
I was quite excited to see ‘Threaten/Hijack for each opponent, or draw cards and make treasures’. If you’ve never hit someone with their own Voltron commander before, I highly recommend trying out this card. Not even their Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots will hinder Seize the Spotlight because Seize the Spotlight doesn’t target.
There will be cards in red to compliment this one, like Goldspan Dragon or Rain of Riches (also from NCC), and Rakdos decks with sac outlets can pressure the choice of their opponents too because they likely won’t want to see their most threatening creature sacrificed. Take control of someone's big Hydra or Eldrazi, do combat with them and then cast Fling as a cherry on top.
I’ve seen people vote time on Expropriate often enough to realize more often than not this will draw you three cards and make you three treasures which makes it ‘technically free’ to cast. I’ve seen people try to make Risk Factor work in EDH a few times before, and in reality it almost never draws you any cards because 4 life can be too insignificant. Grabbing their best body of choice however, can apply way more pressure in their decisionmaking either fame or fortune.
And… scene! That’s it for our SNC and NCC top 10 - find us again next week where we’ll talk in depth about the five new precons!
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