We’ve seen 30 or so cards thusfar, so its time to start brewing, but its also as important to look at how things will change for our deck. Not only what new cards we’ll have, but also what new cards will you have to face in the future. After all, decks are always about the context and if the metagame changes, your deck might take some splash damage. I know my deck will become worse if Pure Aggro strategies become more commonplace, as they seem to have done in the past few weeks.

First, the two new temples, [scryfall]Temple of Malady[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Temple of Epiphany[/scryfall]. These might seem innocuous, but actually these probably mean certain decks will be more popular in the future. For one, green was a popular splash color for the monoblack devotion decks early on, but now the splash has shifted to pretty much all the other colors. With this temple available, we’ll probably see more Bg Devotion again. Also, UWx decks will have better access to a red splash, so that will probably replace black more often.

[scryfall]Keranos, God of Storms[/scryfall] will probably make UWR decks alluring as well and will probably have a massive effect on the metagame. Not sure you can play creatures with low toughness for long anymore. Hopefully we are not going to be in that situation. Weenie strategies are already in a pretty poor place and this just make it worse. Not that [scryfall]Drown in Sorrow[/scryfall] or [scryfall]Bile Blight[/scryfall] helped…

On the other hand, there’s a cycle of cheap creatures with drawbacks. Those could possibly make fast decks playable in pretty much all colors. I mentioned [scryfall]Gnarled Scarhide[/scryfall] earlier in another article and it could enable even faster Suicide Black decks. Here’s to hoping there’ll be a good discard card in the set as well (probably won’t be, because [scryfall]Thoughtseize[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Duress[/scryfall] are already in the format).

I’m loving [scryfall]Setessan Tactics[/scryfall]. Don’t know if it can be useful in any way, but I think it could be a pretty good trick for certain monster decks.

In EDH I can see [scryfall]Scourge of Fleets[/scryfall] making quite a few decks (at least mine), as well as [scryfall]Extinguish All Hope[/scryfall] becoming a staple of black decks alongside the other sweepers. It might even become more popular, because it will be so easily attainable and you can build around it, at least a little. Fun with [scryfall]Nighthowler[/scryfall]. The new Ajani will probably become fairly popular in EDH, I think. The lifegain is just so tempting, although not as good as one might think.

Also, I know I’ll have some fun with [scryfall]Dakra Mystic[/scryfall] and someone will try to make a combo deck out of [scryfall]Sage of Hours[/scryfall].