The pre-release is upon us! Obviously we’ve done our homework with the LR commons & uncommons review and such, so I’m not going to try and duplicate that. But I will try and make a prognostication on some high-level questions like removal, tricks, ramping. All guesses guaranteed to hold up until your second draw step in the first round.

Removal

“Removal” is obviously a very sweeping category. Everything from efficient but conditional, unconditional but expensive, efficient & unconditional but difficult to cast; it’s almost impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison. What I like to do is count the total amount of “playable removal” (and bounce) and compare it to previous sets. So let’s flashback briefly to Ravnica Allegiance.

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So that’s 10 pieces of common playable removal, three uncommon. For reference, here is what I considered unplayable or sideboard.

Obviously those five all occasionally have good homes, but by-and-large, you’re not excited to draft them or play with them. They played as D+ or sideboard, at best. So where are we at with War of the Spark? Let’s take a look!

Wow! So there is 12 pieces of uncommon removal and 10 pieces of common removal that look to be at least decent. Four of them are planeswalkers! So, yes, there WILL be removal, and lots of it. Half of it is at instant speed! So be *very cautious* playing into open mana.

Combat Tricks

By contrast, the combat tricks look to be extremely thin.

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Okay, so we have OG Giant Growth. And I think Battlefield Promotion will do some serious work as well. Storm Strike taught us that +1 power and first strike is usually enough. Throw in getting the Proliferate train rolling and incidental lifegain, you have a card. I’m more dubious about Lazotep Plating (sweet art aside) since it looks to be a subpar Dive Down for an extra mana. Unlikely Aid is also unlikely to find a home, but it’s not unplayable on its face. So yes, combat tricks. Not that many. Also nothing in red. Technically there are two tricks, but boy-howdy they look terrible. I’m not even going to link them. That’s how little faith I have.

Ramp/Splash

There aren’t gates, but we have Gateway Plaza at common. There is also the Centaur Nurturer, which is drawing very justified comparisons to the Naga Vitalist from Hour. It’s a single card fulfilling two roles: it stabilizes as a 2/4 blocker and it provides mana fixing. All at common. The uncommon ones look very good too, though keep in mind that the planeswalker does need to be alive to provide the splashing.

In conclusion, this looks to be a high power set. Lots of removal, pretty good splashing tools raises the ceiling. Few combat tricks makes me think that aggro decks are going to be hard to put togethe