Though the rares and mythics of each new MTG set are the cards that get the most attention during spoiler season, they’re not always the best cards overall. Entire formats, Pauper especially, are carried on the back of powerful commons and uncommons. These are the unsung heroes of Magic: rarely commanding prices above a few cents, but always there to lend stability to your latest deckbuilding venture. Carrot Cake, a new common from Bloomburrow, is a perfect example of this MTG trend. It’s not a powerful card on the surface, and yet it’s seeing play in multiple formats. Not just for the excellent art, either.
Serving Up In Standard
First and foremost among these formats is Standard. Despite being a basic Food with a couple of Rabbits and a couple of scries, Carrot Cake is showing up in four distinct Standard decks at the time of writing. These are largely Control lists, of the Boros, Azorius, and Mono-White variety. Carrot Cake really doesn’t look like the kind of MTG card you’d normally see in Control. That said, the archetype is in a bit of a unique spot at present.
Thanks to Caretaker’s Talent, post-Bloomburrow Control decks are able to generate advantage from token producers. Cards like Urabrask’s Forge are seeing an uptick in play as a result. Instead of running a single planeswalker or big creature as a finisher, Control decks are now relying on consistent token generators like these. Carrot Cake is clearly not finisher material, but it does provide tokens and card selection early. It also pairs nicely with Fountainport for value in long games.
It’s not just Control players who are having their Carrot Cake and eating it. The card is also showing up in Esper Midrange decks as well. These decks also play Caretaker’s Talent and plenty of token generators like Lunar Convocation and Gumdrop Poisoner. Convocation supports a bit of a lifegain theme alongside Zoraline, Cosmos Caller, which Carrot Cake reinforces due to being a Food. There’s a lot of synergy here for just two mana. Two 1/1 tokens also go a lot further on their own in Midrange games than they do in Control, so the card is a slam-dunk inclusion.
Peckish For Pauper?
A new common seeing play in Standard is hardly big news. Even if it is one that’s as flavorful as Carrot Cake. What is big news, however, is that common seeing further play in older formats. Specifically, formats where the power level, and therefore the barrier to entry, is much higher. Pauper may be a format made up entirely of commons, but it’s still an eternal format, and it’s still impressive for a card like Carrot Cake to break through there.
Currently, Carrot Cake is seeing play in Synthesizer decks. Both the Boros and Mardu variants. Synthesizer as a whole is an artifacts-matter archetype named after the excellent Experimental Synthesizer, built around getting extra value out of artifact enters effects. Carrot Cake makes a ton of sense in these lists. The Cake itself gives you the second token and Scry as long as you sacrifice it, even if not to its own ability. This allows it to synergize beautifully with the likes of Deadly Dispute and Kuldotha Rebirth.
Since Carrot Cake provides value when it enters, it’s also a great artifact to ‘pick up’ with either Glint Hawk or Kor Skyfisher. Basically, the card plays perfectly with every aspect of the Synthesizer game plan, so it’s no surprise to see it showing up in the deck already. As a full playset, no less.
These are early days, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the card survived the testing period and became a Synthesizer mainstay. The deck has picked up a few pieces from recent sets, after all. Like Toxin Analysis and Refurbished Familiar. Keep a close eye on this crafty Cake; it may not be flashy, but it’s putting in some serious multi-format work already.
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