Pinter’s Picks: Lost Caverns of Ixalan

Pinter’s Picks: Lost Caverns of Ixalan

By Jeremy Pinter, Team Swish

Hello and welcome to this set’s installment of cards that caught my eye for Legacy and/or Vintage. Ixalan is not a setting I associate with powerful cards historically… but maybe some surprises were hiding under the surface in the eponymous caverns. I brought up the visual spoiler in color order, so that’s how I’ll tackle things.

Dauntless Dismantler

In the vein of Death & Taxes hatebears, this is a 2 mana creature with a one-sided static effect. However it doesn’t quite shut off your opponent’s artifacts, it just slows them down. The activated ability brings to mind the classic Mox Monkey (Gorilla Shaman) but would have to be sacrificed itself instead of a repeatable effect. Overall it’s one more arrow for the quiver, but I don’t think this one hits the bullseye.

Spring-Loaded Sawblades

My favorite deck in Legacy currently is Painter (which I’ve been playing at All-Star on Thursdays), so artifacts with powerful come into play effects will catch my eye. I’ve been playing a version with a white splash, so creature removal plus a threat to close the game is certainly attractive. The issue I see is that my white splash is for Swords to Plowshares which has no restrictions of 5 toughness or needing to be tapped. I think I will definitely give it a spin and see whether it makes the cut.

Tishana’s Tidebinder

Merfolk decks tend to be more of a meme than contender, but each time a new set comes out there is always someone willing to dust off the old cards and give it a whirl. A 3/2 Merfolk body with Flash for 2U has already been proven feasible with Hullbreacher, so then we need to compare text. Countering an ability and keeping it locked down does seem powerful, but is more narrow than stopping additional card draw. Also, you can set up combos with the pirate that I just can’t foresee from the wizard.

Brass’s Tunnel-Grinder

Speaking of value engines for Painter, this one felt like a Phyrexian Dragon Engine in how it can churn through additional cards. The upside is that you get the trigger coming into play from hand OR graveyard but potentially less cards overall. Another distinction is whether it eventually having an additional land that cascades into Lotus Petal compares favorably to a double-striking attacker. I’ll add it to the pool of cards to test and see how it goes.

Poison Dart Frog

Yeah, no chance this sees any constructed play. I just thought it was cute.

Molten Collapse

Neither Dreadbore nor Terminate is seeing much, if any, Eternal play. However, the ease with which this can trigger the ‘choose both’ mode off a fetchland made me take notice. When trying to think of a deck that would make use of it, I also hit a bit of a roadblock. Grixis Delver is a popular deck that could be a possible home, I would just question the efficiency there. I fully expect this will put up all sorts of results in younger formats and didn’t want to look foolish leaving it off my list.

The Millenium Calendar

With nothing other than the Calendar and some lands, you’ll hit 1000 counters on turn 9. Older formats let us speed that up with zero cost artifacts like Mox Opal as well as Voltaic and Manifold Keys. Legacy content creator Tony Scapone is currently championing a Paradox Engine strategy that finishes with Aetherflux Reservoir. While that deck is admittedly sweet, I like this as an alternate choice because it’s tutorable with Urza’s Saga as well as being able to win outright if your opponent had One Ring protection.

Echoing Deeps

After Painter, my favorite Legacy strategies are Lands and/or GW Depths. In both of those archetypes I could see this being included as a 1-of for the times your key tutor target or combo piece has already been hit by Wasteland. In that same vein, decks like 12-post already play Vesuva to maximize on copies of the same name in play. If any do get destroyed early, the Deeps could help reinforce that redundancy. I’ll definitely be picking up at least one.

Permission Denied

I was hesitant about including the Jurassic Park cards because I thought they were a little goofy, but so is Hasbro for making them legal. I like the idea of not only stopping a key spell, but answering the rest of their turn as well. The main issue with that would be if they were to counter THIS spell or get involved in the stack while this waits to resolve. Compared with Dovin’s Veto it does feel weaker, but it might have some niche application.

Dino DNA

Last up is another card that makes the list due to the sheer power of Urza’s Saga and being able to pull silver bullets out of your deck in key moments. However, I’m not sure what monster we’re trying to slay with this particular bullet. It acts as graveyard removal like Soul-Guide Lantern, but needs a mana investment. It can generate creatures like Retrofitter Foundry, but costs more AND requires sorcery speed. In the end, I think all of those detract too much from its ability to see play.

What do you think about my picks this time around? Did you have your eye on a card that I missed? Come find me in the All-Stars or Swish Gaming Discord @JPinterMTG and let me know. See you next time!