Magic: The Gathering is entering the summer months with a three-color set that’s focused on five demon crime families in the city of New Capenna.
Streets of New Capenna preview season started today and the final two leaders of the families were revealed.
Jetmir, Lord Xander, and Raffine were already revealed prior to the beginning of spoiler season. The final two, representing the G/W/U Brokers and the B/R/G Riveteers, remained a mystery until today.
Falco Spara, Pactweaver
- Mana value: 1GWU
- Type: Legendary Creature Bird Demon
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats: 3/3
- Keywords: Flying, trample
- First ability: Falco Spara, Pactweaver enters the battlefield with a shield counter on it.
- Second ability: You may look at the top card of your library at any time.
- Third ability: You may cast spells from the top of your library by removing a counter from a Creature you control in addition to paying their other costs.
Green, White, and Blue are all about controlling the battlefield with efficient creatures and disruptive spells and abilities to take and maintain the advantage. Falco Spara helps accomplish this by allowing you to cast spells from the top of your library.
This can be accomplished by removing a counter from a creature. It can be a Shield Counter, the new mechanic for this color shard, or any other kind of counter. This makes creatures that generate +1/+1 counters like Lumincarch Aspirant great enablers for Falco Spara’s ability.
As a four drop, Falco Spara fits into some of the three-color creature decks currently in Standard and doesn’t occupy the jam-packed three-drop slot.
Ziatora, the Incinerator
- Mana value: 3BRG
- Type: Legendary Creature Demon Dragon
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats; 6/6
- Keyword: Flying
- First ability: At the beginning of your end step, you may sacrifice another Creature. When you do, Ziatora, the Incinerator deals damage equal to that Creature’s power to any target, and you create three Treasure tokens.
Treasures are already powerful in Standard. U/R and G/R/U lists are already using Treasures as a way to generate fast mana that can be used to cast two or three spells each turn and take over the game.
B/R sacrifice decks are also strong in the format but focus more on sacrificing Artifacts and slowly grinding out value, instead of sacrificing large creatures like Ziatora-based decks want to do.
The door is open for Ziatora to fit in as a top-end threat in B/R/G sacrifice strategies that center around sacrificing creatures with high power stats. The mana generated by Ziatora’s ability can be used to bring those cards back from the graveyard with pieces like Bala Ged Recovery.
New Capenna is scheduled for a digital launch on April 28 and a global tabletop release on April 29.
All images via WotC.
