When I write these, I think I have to stop saying “man, there are a lot of commons and uncommons in MKM that look really playable in constructed” like it’s some new phenomena. I know that I’ve expressed this sentiment a lot as I’ve been writing these kinds of articles, and I have to understand that things always look better during spoiler season than they do the morning after. 

So with that sentiment fully in mind, holy cow there are a lot of good constructed playables at the common and uncommon rarity in Murders at Karlov Manner.

While I will say that I’ve had to narrow down my list from about 25-30 cards for Wilds of Eldraine and Lost Caverns of Ixalan, my starting list for Murders at Karlov Manner was only 21 cards… and even within those 21 cards, realistically I only had to make three-to-four harder decisions of what I wanted to put on the list because I really feel like several of these are all but guaranteed to see play — which is a take that I am fully ready to see age like milk. 

I want to discuss a few reprints before I get to the new cards, and similar to Wilds of Eldraine, if I didn’t talk about reprints separately, one of them would be the first card on my list. That card is Lightning Helix, which to me is a card that has always felt like it should be Pioneer legal, but now that it’s here, I’m not actually sure I want it.

For those who haven’t really played a format where Helix is legal, let me tell you that it is not a card to take lightly. It is a card that absolutely punishes aggro decks hard, a lesson we may have already learned from the Adventure half of Virtue of Persistence — but Helix is also a staple in Modern burn decks, and considering we already have Boros Charm, Helix is certainly a tool that could give that deck the juice it needs to be good. 

It’s also just a generically playable card if you find yourself in Red and White colors, ironically except for the Boros decks that already exist in Pioneer, (Pia and Convoke) where I don’t think it’ll really be a player. That said, whatever home it finds itself in, Lightning Helix is all but guaranteed to be a powerful player in Pioneer. 

I will briefly acknowledge a reprint of Shock, which is a now outclassed classic card, before talking about the other reprint… that isn’t actually a reprint. But let’s be honest, Novice Inspector is basically a reprint of Thraben Inspector. We do not need to question the potential playability of Novice Inspector. 

An upside this does have over a straight reprint, however, is that you can now run eight copies. Is there any deck in Pioneer that would want to run eight copies of Thraben Inspector? I’d ask you to tell me, but you’ve already drawn two of them off your Knight-Errant of Eos that was convoked with two more of them. 

Still, ranking Novice Inspector on a list of new cards felt like cheating, and I write these to be hilariously wrong talk about new cards we haven’t seen yet. We’ve pretty much seen this one before. 

Now then, let’s get to the new stuff.

I’m going to break my own tennant of writing this article. I do not believe Pick Your Poison is a card that you’ll see too much in Pioneer, and as such, it probably shouldn’t be on the list. I think this will become such a sideboard staple in Modern, that I don’t want to leave it off entirely. 

If you don’t want to hear about this card’s many applications in Modern, you can just skip to the next card. If you do, let me run through them.

For the low-cost of a single green mana, this card gives you three incredibly powerful modes. Let’s go through them mode by mode. 

• Each opponent sacrifices an artifact 

I think this is the most relevant mode for Modern. There are a ton of artifacts that see modern play, and not only that, but there are many decks that play a lot of singleton artifacts where this will be incredibly relevant. The best example is The One Ring, and Pick Your Poison is especially good against The One Ring. Not only does it make you sacrifice the card, which gets around the Ring’s indestructible clause, the card itself doesn’t target a specific player, meaning that you can play this on your turn after your opponent plays The One Ring, and they’ll have to sacrifice it, getting through the one turn of protection that the Ring provides as well. While it won’t get rid of the protection for the turn, it will at least get rid of the card itself.

But there are playable artifacts beyond The One Ring, namely Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, which is played as a lone artifact in Yawgmoth. This also has corner cases where it can get rid of a stray Colossus Hammer if there are no other artifacts on board. While you will run into problems with this card as artifact hate against any Asmo decks or even something like Hammer, I think the upside of this mode alone is so high. 

• Each opponent sacrifices an enchantment

It turns out there are a few playable enchantments in modern too, with the most applicable being a land. That’s right, if you run into someone playing an Urza’s Saga deck, this is a modal one mana Stone Rain, and what crazy value that is against a deck like Hammer or Prime Time. And while it admittedly isn’t the first card that can destroy Urza’s Saga for one mana, it is a situation that is definitely worth pointing out. There are also situations where some opponents run Leyline of Sanctity, which again, this card also gets around. I think this will be the least selected mode on this card, but the versatility this card provides for one mana is truly insane.

• Each opponent sacrifices a flier

As someone who one-tricks Izzet Murktide in Modern, this card makes me a little sad, because this additional flexibility will also be very good against my favorite deck. While I can play around it with a delirious Dragon’s Rage Channeler or a Ledger Shredder, it’s still going to be an annoying and efficient card to see cast. While there aren’t a ton of other applications for this mode in modern either, being good against one of the most played decks in the format with this mode alone is something to keep an eye on.

So where does this leave us? I anticipate this card being a staple in the sideboards of Prime Time, who previously ran Run Afoul at one point, and G Tron. It could also be a sideboard card for a deck like Jund Saga, but regardless of exactly where, I think this is an easy modern staple. 

In Pioneer though, I really don’t see it. I just don’t think it lines up particularly well against any deck in the format. There isn’t a deck trying to win with one artifact, enchantment, or flier, and the hate cards in Pioneer aren’t quite good enough to want to run this either. But if we do get a strong hate card or a deck that is trying to win with one of those things, the value of this card in Pioneer will skyrocket. 

Break Out is a very strange card but at the end of the day I think it has some upside, though once again, I’m not sure that potential comes in Pioneer. A potential home for this card is in Modern as well, in the Domain deck, as every creature in that deck except Scion of Draco has two-or-less Mana Value, and specifically the idea of getting a hasty Territorial Kavu is an enticing one. 

As far as Pioneer goes, there isn’t an obvious home for the card but I think the ceiling of it is intriguing to keep in mind. The fact that it puts the creature in hand gives it somewhat of a fail safe, and you obviously want to put a creature onto the board with haste. I think the problem in Pioneer is that we don’t really have impactful enough creatures at two Mana Value or less that we want to haste, like Modern has in Territorial Kavu. That said, should we ever get more interesting creatures for Break Out to bring in, I could see it having its day in the sun.

I think by now it should be obvious to people that I don’t really have an eye for what makes a combo good or bad. For example, I put Geological Appraiser as the third card on this list for Lost Caverns of Ixalan, which is good. I did not however mention it in the context of any combo decks, which is what got it banned. So I’m going to put Chalk Outline on here basically for the combo potential it has with two Ovalchase Daredevils and a discard outlet, because if you have all of those pieces, this card just goes insane with value. Even outside of any other combo potential that this card provides, it also has a chance, though a pretty slim one, to just work in a Cauldron Familiar-esque deck, although this is not the best card in the set for those decks. Either way, Chalk Outline gives a ton of value if you give it the right set up and the combo potential puts it higher on the watch list.

I’m not sure what the oil will be, but Snarling Gorehound seems like a pretty cool engine card for something like a dredge-less dredge shell. Unlike the other cards on this list so far and the cards I’m going to talk about, I don’t really have an idea for what kind of deck would be interested in our new dog, but I think the potential ceiling on it being a pretty strong enabler gives it merit to include. I’ve seen some brews floating around on Twitter that have included it, and I think long term this card’s bite will be as good as its bark. If I had to spitball, I would say that outside of Dredgeless Dredge, some kind of Rally the Ancestors deck would be the first place I’d be interested in trying it. 

Demand Answers is what happens when a Deadly Dispute and a Thrill of Possibility love each other very much and decide to have a baby. And this is one pretty darn good baby. For as good as it is however, it might be kind of a “tweener” card, by which I mean that it’s really good for a common but not so good that it becomes a long standing staple. 

Potentially I could see this finding a home in UR Creativity in Pioneer. They’re a deck that meets the qualifications of 1) not minding discarding cards, 2) having artifacts to potentially sacrifice, and 3) not playing Black to play Deadly Dispute instead. Because that’s the thing with this, is that it’s not going to see play over Dispute in black decks and lists aren’t usually looking for five-to-eight of that effect. And while this is a strictly better Thrill of Possibility, most red decks don’t have the quantity of artifacts to make the upside that much greater. Still though, Thrill of Possibility is a card that has been close to playable in the past and maybe an additional piece of upside is what the card finally needs to really break the threshold. 

Have any of you ever heard of that Amalia deck? You know how Ward is a really annoying ability for Amalia to have? Well worry no longer, because we have a pretty flexible new answer to Amalia, among other things, in Long Goodbye. 

I was really high on Eliminate when the card was printed in Core 20, and while that never really caught on, power creeping it with the additional benefit of uncounterable could be enough to get it over the edge. Not only is uncounterable relevant text for Amalia, but it also shoots a Graveyard Trespasser profitably, and gets around some (not all) of the protection abilities that Azorius or Blue Spirits players have access to. Additionally, I want to note that this card will be very good in standard as it gets around Raffine, Scheming Seer’s Ward 1 tax. 

Previously I’d have put this card higher on my list but I always bite on the cheap black removal spells and while I’m not quite going to fall for it this time, I do think the uncounterable nature of this card should at least make it a strong consideration for Black decks in Pioneer. 

I like Rubblebelt Maverick a lot for a one drop and I feel like it’s getting kind of slept on. Surveilling 2 on ETB for a one drop is a very strong amount of card selection. For some a deck that cares about putting cards in bin, card types in bin, or just smoothing draw, Maverick does all of that. If Grim Flayer were still a card people played in 2024, it would curve very nicely into it. As is, Grim Flayer or not, it’s still a card some generic midrange players might have some kind of interest in. 

That isn’t all of the text on the card though. It also gives you a bit of value after dying, and while exiling itself from the bin to just put a +1/+1 counter on a creature is not an insane amount of value after dying, it’s more than most creatures have. 

Rubblebelt Maverick looks like a role player to me, and while Cenote Scout was heralded as the Green Thraben Inspector last set, I’m wondering if that title actually belongs to Rubblebelt Maverick.

I love Deduce and I feel pretty strongly that it’ll see play in Pioneer somewhere. The format doesn’t have a legal Think Twice, and while this isn’t exactly Think Twice, it actually has some upside over Think Twice. 

For one, it gives you an artifact, which as I stated previously is something some decks in this format do care about. Deduce seems like it has a lot of potential in Creativity decks for that reason, as those decks already play things like Secrets of the Key, and while I think these cards would fill different roles, I think there is ample room for them to coexist. 

I also think there is room to play this in a typical control deck, specifically in a Dimir Control build. That deck is very interested in drawing cards at instant speed and Deduce gives you two opportunities to do that. I’m a little more skeptical of it in regular Azorius Control but I will genuinely be surprised if Deduce doesn’t find a home in Pioneer somewhere, I think it’s probably one of the better draw spells we have in the format.

No More Lies is guaranteed to see Pioneer play. It is probably only going to see play in exactly one deck, but it’s going to see a lot of play in that deck.

Enjoyers of Make Disappear everywhere weep as they take all copies out of their Azorius Control deck to make room for No More Lies. People have been asking for Mana Leak in Pioneer for a while, and I think straight up Mana Leak would have been more healthy than this card. 

No More Lies is color restricted to just Azorius, basically making it so Azorius Control and maybe a build of Spirits can include it, whereas Mana Leak would have been a great option for every Blue deck. No More Lies just makes the rich richer and I don’t think that I love that this is the direction they took with it. 

Greater format philosophy aside, I like when they release cards for this list that have an obvious home where it will excel and that’s what they did here. It makes my job easier. 

The exile clause isn’t just flavor text either, as you will sometimes be able to nab cards like Kroxa, Memory Deluge, or even one of the Amalia Combo creatures. 

Like I said, cards like this are a fastball down the middle, they’re what you want to see and almost guaranteed to be a hit, though I will admit there is the chance that it doesn’t take the format by storm like people expect.

Call a Surprise Witness

Not on my Watch

Case File Auditor

Case of the Gateway Express

Forensic Research

It Doesn’t Add Up

Unscrupulous Agent

Crime Novelist

Frantic Scapegoat

Hard Hitting Question

Gleaming Geardrake

Insidious Roots is number one on the list because I have never seen a card that is so obviously good and so obviously beloved by everyone as this one. This is a card for the spikes, the brewers, and everyone in between. It’s a pretty objectively sweet card with a great design but is also so incredibly pushed. I haven’t really seen anyone complain about how pushed it is because people care more about how freaking cool it is.

The obvious home for this is in a Cauldron Familiar deck, where it will just make you an army of plants. But any deck you’re going to put it in will make an army of plants. People will find many different shells to do that. That’s what the card does is make any army of plants that also get huge and also tap for mana. 

The craziest part to me is that they decided to make the ability buff all of your plants, not just one. That almost feels like it had to have been a last second change because I don’t understand how that would have made it through testing otherwise.

I absolutely love this card in Modern too, in an Asmo-food style deck which is already being tested out because of course it is because this card is awesome.

Does this card have the potential to be banned? I would be incredibly surprised. It’s not like it’s ubiquitously playable in every deck and it’s not a one card combo like Geological Appraiser. It’s an engine with a condition that is sort of weird to hit but if you can make it hit, the engine is going to run real smooth. I can’t wait to try out my own brews with it.

This set has gotten a bad rep at being underpowered and I don’t actually think that’s true. I have full confidence that some of the rares and mythics that people are down on right now will end up surprising people, which has already started to happen. More importantly, this set is absolutely juiced in the lower rarity slots, which I think is good for the game. It’s nice when strong cards are easily accessible, both in terms of paper cost and Arena Wild Cards, both of which are the reasons I am so passionate about these cards.

No matter how right or wrong I am, I always look forward to parsing through the commons and uncommons of every set to make this list and was especially excited after reading the spoilers for this set. 

P.S. My favorite card

I’m going to start adding on what my favorite card in every set is, no matter the rarity. From how I talked about it, most of you are probably going to assume that it’ll be Insidious Roots, but it isn’t. It’s Krenko’s Buzzcrusher. I can’t wait to blow up Lotus Fields with it and still lose to that deck. I’m genuinely excited. Thanks for reading! See you next time.