One of the perks of my job is that I am put in a position where I get to show spoiled cards given to us by Wizards to all of you. We have received a batch of four new cards from Worldwake, which include a fun black Quest, green psuedo-evasion, a powerful Limited tribal card, and another man-land added to the Zendikon cycle. Let’s take a look!

So first on the list I’ll cut right to the chase, and show off the goodness. The new rare Black Quest, probably the first in the part of a new cycle of Quest cards. Here it is, in all it's glory:


Now, some of you guys may be confused by this card. I’ll be honest, I am too. This card reads almost exactlylike the Zendikar Ascensions. The Quests in Zendikar always involved sacrificing them after you achieved so many quest counters and then you got a one-time effect. This, like the Ascensions, involve a constant effect once you reach the correct number of quest counters. But, technicalities and previous naming conventions aside, I really like this card.

The biggest problem with this card is actually not, interestingly enough, getting the two quest counters on it. The problem is getting it to trigger. Blightning, Mind Rot, and Mind Sludge all will get the counters on it easily enough. It’s keeping the hand size down that is going to be the problem. You are going to need a hardcore discard deck to make the card reliable enough to earn its spot. But if you manage to find that deck, this card is going to be the perfect finisher for you. I’d like to see a Black and Red evolution of the Blightning deck, in which it breaks out into a control deck, and uses this as one of its finishers to just railroad the opponent before finishing them off.

If nothing else, it's a fun addition to those old kitchen-table Megrim decks.

Next up is a new Aura that may have some limited potential. Take a look at the new Green attempt at “evasion”:


This from me is another card that gets a solid: “Meh”. It just feels clunky. Auras are probably one of the weakest cards in Magic. If they kill your creature, you are losing two cards to their one removal spell. In this case, they have to kill it as you’re targeting your creature, which is a little better, but I still don’t think the risk is really worth it. The effect, while useful, isn’t particularly powerful, certainly it won’t see any play outside of Limited. Limited especially makes you care about pulling every big of card advantage that you can, and I just don’t think the power level makes this card worth it. Will it see play? It could make it as a last card for your Limited deck. Will people be happy about that? No.

Earlier I mentioned looking at a new card of a cycle that we’ve already started to spoil. If you remember my last spoiler review, I talked about the Zendikon cycle, specifically the Green one, which I thought was actually pretty lousy. As I hoped, the cycle itself, which I liked the design of, does get better with the Blue addition:


This guy is a significant improvement over his Green counterpart. Instead of six mana for a 6/4, which that late in the game is just pretty bad, the Blue Zendikon clocks in at a solid two mana (if you count tapping the land to attack) for a 2/2 flier. Blue just doesn't get that kind of goodness these days. This means you can bring it out on turn one, and just head to the races to start beating face, and get the land back once they finally decide to Burst Lightning it. And then trigger landfall again! I hope the other colors continue this trend and impress me as much as Blue does.

And the last card today is another pleasant surprise. Just the other day I was talking to my friend and saying: “You know, they need to make a card that makes Ally tokens” and then it seems Wizard went out and answered my prayer:


Now, in my mind, I wanted an Ally maker a la Sliversmith, but I'll settle for this. Sure, this version is rather over-costed Raise the Alarm.That doesn't change the fact that this card is ridiculous in Zendikar Limited. Notice a couple of key features about it. First off, it’s an Instant. Creatures at instant speed are always better than being played at sorcery speed. It allows you to make some nice combat tricks with all the +1/+1 counters on the Ally cards. Second, it puts two creatures into play AT THE SAME TIME. This is important because most Ally cards have effects related to the number of Allies you have in play. If you were to play one Ally, then play another, you will get less out of the effect than if you put two into play at the same time. With Join the Ranks, you get two separate triggers for each ally, and both are seen in each trigger. It’s little things that add up. Remember that Halimar Excavator from yesterday? Yeah, he's gonna love this card.

So that's all spoilers that I wanted to share with you all today. Aside from my lackluster opinion of Canopy Cover, I was actually pretty happy with this batch. Things like Join the Ranks and Quest for the Nihil Stone make me interested to see how people will end up playing with them. This upcoming format is starting to get me really excited. Until next time, keep it locked on Eye of the Vortex for your spoiler coverage.

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