Despite only being a few days into spoiler season, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan hasn’t failed to impress. Between the valuable reprints and box toppers, incredible new spoilers, and Typal delights, this set has it all. As if all these incredible cards weren’t enough already, however, Wizards keeps revealing new bombs and soon-to-be staples!
Pushing the above to the extreme, the latest batch of spoilers certainly hasn’t disappointed. In fact, it seems that the latest cards might be some of the best in all of The Lost Caverns of Ixalan! Promising incredible value in every sense of the word, these cards are surely primed to shake up formats and delight Commander players.
If that’s not enough to get you excited, one of these cards is perhaps the best turtle ever printed!
Bedrock Tortoise
To kick things off with the titular turtle, Bedrock Turtle is a surprisingly devastating threat. Being a four mana 0/6 you might not think this at first, however, they do have some tricks up their sleeves. The most potent of these is their ability to make your creatures assign damage with toughness, not power.
Thanks to this neat treat, when attacking, Bedrock Turtle is effectively a 6/6 for four mana, which is incredibly good. Undoubtedly providing a bit of spice to lackluster green decks, this card could give the archetype a much-needed boost in Standard. As if that wasn’t enough, Bedrock Turtle also provides temporary protection for your creatures with Hexproof.
While Bedrock Turtle’s protective effect is only active on your turn, this card is nevertheless jam-packed with abilities. That being said, however, it is missing one key detail that could make it its own deck. Unlike High Alert, Bedrock Turtle doesn’t let creatures with Defender attack.
Sadly, this missing ability somewhat hoses the ideal potential of this card. After all, Bedrock Turtle isn’t able to turn Walls into a cheap and nasty threat. Instead, the best this Turtle can hope for is teaming up with Unhallowed Phalanx. While this is definitely less than perfect, this doesn’t mean Bedrock Turtle is a bad card by any means.
Looking at the competition, Bedrock Turtle has a serious claim to being the strongest turtle in MTG. Challenged only by Yidaro, Wandering Monster and Blossoming Tortoise, there’s not much between this trio. Unfortunately, however, despite these powerful cards, Turtle Typal is still a long way away from being a viable thing.
Get Lost
Like much of the removal available in white, Get Lost comes with a catch to justify it being ruthlessly efficient. Without this, the ability to destroy any creature, enchantment, or Planeswalker should definitely be black. Thankfully, this isn’t the case, as the last thing black decks need right now is more efficient removal.
While Get Lost may have the catch of creating two Map Tokens for the destroyed permanent’s controller this isn’t the end of the world. In fact, this ability is still almost always worthwhile, so long as you pick the right target. Ten times out of ten, for instance, I’d happily trade two Map Tokens for Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.
Alongside making worthwhile late-game trades, Get Lost is also rather efficient early on. Used within the right control deck, the downside of Get Lost can be almost entirely mitigated. After all, there’s not much benefit to having Map Tokens if you don’t have any creatures to activate them on.
Ultimately, while it’s not the perfect piece of removal, Get Lost is almost a straight upgrade over Fateful Absence. Not reliably drawing a card, unlike the Clue Tokens, it’s likely most decks will choose Get Lost over the competition. Thanks to this plenty of, Pioneer, Standard, and Commander players have a new toy to play with.
Stalactite Stalker
Arguably one of the grossest Goblins in all of MTG, Stalactite Stalker is a lot more than an ugly face. Offering a scalable threat, menace, and even removal, Stalactite Stalker does it all, so long as you keep Descending. While this is quite the catch, this little guy does have a lot of competitive potential that could be realized.
Ideally finding its home in Modern, Stalactite Stalker works wonders with Fetchlands and format staples. Making Descending each turn a piece of cake, Stalactite Stalker can easily be a 2/2 with menace on turn one. While this is hardly an overwhelmingly dominant threat, their ability to scale and optional removal should make them a compelling option.
Unfortunately, outside of Modern and potentially even Legacy, Stalactite Stalker is a lot less viable. Technically, they should have a place within the Sultai Graveyard deck in Standard, however, this is far from ideal. Lacking the consistency of Modern, this deck would need to play perfectly in order to get those vital Decends.
Ultimately, while they definitely have potential, it seems unlikely that Stalactite Stalker is going to warp the entire Modern meta. That being said, however, we wouldn’t at all be surprised if we see them being part of a challenge-topping list in the near future. Whether or not that happens, however, remains to be seen.
Restless Ridgeline
While it’s hardly the most powerful new card within The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Restless Ridgeline is still getting a lot of love. This is largely thanks to the gorgeous artwork by Álvaro Calvo Escudero. Depicting a Borealopelta dinosaur remarkably faithfully, players have been awed by this card’s flavorful real-world reference.
Beyond looking great, Restless Ridgeline should also be rather playable, although not in every format. Boasting decent power and stats for Standard, the main home for this land will undoubtedly be Commander. Fitting nicely into Dinosaur Typal decks, this extra body and untap provided should put in some good work.
But Wait! There’s More!
While we’ve highlighted a handful of new cards here today, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan has a lot more to give. With Spoiler Season far from over, we’re sure to see a few more powerful gems over the coming days. If you don’t want to wait around to see those, however, we’ve already covered plenty of bombs that are well worth paying attention to.
If you’d prefer to look to the future, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan spoilers will continue until the 2nd of November. After this, it will just be a few short weeks until the set actually releases on November 17th. Once this happens, we’ll finally be able to see how much of an impact this set actually makes on each format. From the looks of things so far, it’s definitely going to make quite the splash.
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