Set review time! And as it works out, I get my favorite wedge to review, Abzan. Also known as “Junk” or green-white-black.

Why is it my favorite combination? I suppose it goes back to Knight of the Reliquary and the Legacy decks named “Junk” back in the day. Knight is one of my favorite cards ever, simply because I like the idea of doing cool stuff with your lands. I also play Karador, Ghost Chieftain in EDH, so there’s that.

Anyway, so let’s move on to what we’re looking at today. I’m going to walk through the major cards from this wedge and look at their possible place in Standard and eternal formats and what the implications of that could be. I’ll be back next week with my full set review, but this week I’ll be going a little more in-depth on individual cards instead.

Let’s get started.

Anafenza, the Foremost

For starters, this is sitting at $5 on TCGPlayer after some expected early volatility. And to be honest, I’m kind of unsure how to approach cards like this. It all comes down to how effective the mana will be, and since we’re working with scrylands and tri-lands as a major part of that, casting something like this on turn three will be pretty difficult. Not impossible, of course, but the question is twofold: How much damage are you going to deal yourself to cast this early, and how good is this if you don’t cast it on curve?

To the first question, I think casting tri-costed stuff on turn three is possible, but you’re certainly paying a high price to do so. To the second, I think context matters, and that depends on how aggressive your deck is. If you’re a control deck, you really don’t mind slowing down.

All that said, where does this card fit? With the fact it triggers on attacking and a large part of the upside is being a 4/4 for three mana, I don’t think we’re getting there unless the second ability turns out to be especially relevant. It’s a powerful card, but I think it’s simply going to be too many hoops to jump through to get the payoff here. That means a continued downward trend in prices.

Abzan Ascendancy

This is certainly a powerful effect, and something that fits into a token-type deck, possibly alongside Spirit Bonds. Given that it’s basically near-bulk right now, it could be a breakout candidate. But again, I don’t know how you can stretch your deck to three colors to play this. More likely to remain a bulk rare than anything.

Abzan Charm

This card is sweet, and a reason to actually want to play all three colors. The first two modes are insane, and the third is decent. If Standard looks anything like Block last year, we’ll see lots of midrange decks running around, and this fits into those shells, even if it’s the BUG (Sultai) decks from the Pro Tour splashing White for this.

With Caryatid and better mana-fixing, it’s certainly a possibility. This is removal when you need it, card draw when you want it, and a combat trick to make your Prognostic Sphinx win the mirror all in one, and that’s a lot to like.

Siege Rhino

Now here’s a three-color card I can get behind, though maybe not right away.

The problem is Polukranos, World Eater. That’s a pretty high bar set at the four-mana green slot, and anything that will compete with it needs a reason to do so. I’m not sure the Rhino fits that bill, most notably because he loses combat to Polukranos. The life drain is truly awesome, but it’s an added bonus more so than something you play the card for.

If some sort of reanimator shell does come about and you can turn this thing into a bad impersonation of Thragtusk, then we’ll talk. But until then I see this dropping from the $4 it’s currently at.

Duneblast

Bulk price now, and likely to remain that way even though it’s a cool design. If the four-color midrange deck I described above came to pass, this would be a techy sideboard option, but that’s about it.

Rakshasa Deathdealer

The newest incarnation of Putrid Leech, which you better believe was an insane power in its day, the Deathdealer definitely is interesting and powerful.

That said, I don’t think it’s going to make the transition to Constructed. It’s hard to kill, but it simply ties up too much mana to keep everything up. I’m pretty sure this falls on down to bulk status.

Empty the Pits

Though not strictly Abzan (given the presence of delve), I want to touch on this card. I think it’s a little better than people give it credit for, even if they don’t give it credit for much. I doubt there’s much upside at $4 right now since it’s kind of the definition of a late finisher that doesn’t need many copies, but the power here can’t be denied. In the control mirrors it’s basically an instant-speed “I win the game” card, and that can’t be denied.

If anything were to actually come about that makes filing the graveyard a little easier, this is worth keeping an eye on given its mythic status.

…

So the Abzan mechanic of “counters give abilities” is sweet, and it definitely seems like a fun one for Limited. That said, abilities like this don’t have a great track record of making the push into Constructed, and I’m not sure how this will be any different.

Basically, we need for one of the cards to be playable on its own, and have the ability be an upside but not necessary to the card’s inclusion. Now maybe the mana is good enough for some sort of base-white Heroic deck to come out that can make use of Anafenza, but those decks skew aggressive and in order to justify the life loss you incur to play tri-color cards, those decks have to be much, much better than the mono-colored or even two-color decks. That’s a tough bill to fill, but we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, happy prereleasing!

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter