Adventures In The Forgotten Realms: 7 First Impressions (Part 1)

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms dropped a few days ago. So, today, I’m going to cover my 7 early impressions of the set, and a few standout cards for Standard and Historic. I’ll admit I’m sometimes wrong, but I’m also sometimes incredibly right—so let’s take another spin of the wheel.

Impression 1: Class Cards Are Incredibly Powerful:

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I’m not the first to notice that a lot of the most successful decks in recent times are “engine decks.” These are decks that use a few cards in conjunction to produce overwhelming card advantage. Think Arclight Phoenix decks, Wilderness Reclamation decks, or the short-lived and very busted Omnath, Locus of Creation pile. 

The Class Cards are the newest wave of this. They’re much more powerful than they initially appear and become devastating in multiples. I’ve been working with Druid Class as a basis for a ramp deck. The life gain, by itself, gets widely out of hand. It’s also fantastic as a win-con, as late game you can hit with large and hasty lands. I’d wager we’ll see a lot more enchantment destruction to counteract these cards. 

Other Classes that seem likely to get heavy play are the following:

Cleric:

Good for those always persistent life gain decks. I saw one using Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose to potent results.

Paladin:

As if White aggro needed more help. This thing is utterly brutal and is a four-of in any white-weenie deck. It’s also good enough cheap disruption to see Historic play.

Fighter:

Yay… this can find Embercleave. That makes me so very…. happy. Seriously, though, this is a strong card. 

Ranger:

Green gets so many good cards, huh? This is the only one that makes an instant effect on an often-empty board. Even the level costs are reasonable.

Impression 2: Something something dragon deck?

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I spent way too long working on a dragon deck and couldn’t find the right combination of cards to make it sing. But make no mistake, the amount of Mythic Rare dragons combined with good support cards like Dragon’s Fire means there’s a potent deck waiting to be found. Goldspan Dragon, Magda, Brazen Outlaw, and several more treasure-oriented cards tell me that WOTC wants someone to put it all together into something busted and fun. The red and blue dragons are already seeing some potent play. However, maybe it won’t be the only tribe to get a deck…

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(Come back on Monday for my continuing thoughts on Adventures in the Forgotten Realms!)

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