Rivals of Ixalan (Spoilers)

[CardAgain Sweater]

Hualti, Radiant Champion, looks broken.  +1 to gain loyalty counters equal to total of creatures you control. -1 to give creature a boost to attack and toughness equal to number of creatures you control.  -8 for emblem to draw whenever a creature you control hits the field!

I am trying to look at this and figure out why it's not great. I always get over excited when I see a new card,  until i figure out the flaw. I'm still looking. I have a fun gw cat token deck that would love this card, and even though the curve is busy at 4cmc in gw tokens (cast out, Anointed Procession), I'm gonna try it out.

Hands down the better planeswalker of the set. The + ability being "X+1" where X = the number of creatures you control is very interesting.  It can always come down with at least 4 loyalty for 4cmc, and a chance to be high enough to ultimate next turn with loyalty to spare. The sorcery speed pump isn't terrible in green thanks to Blossoming Defense and heroic intervention or white with indestructible effects. The ultimate is a better , removal-proof Lifecrafter's bestiary.

Wow.

[Soren841]

I don't think that the ultimate is that great though, which is why it can get away with such a good +

[CardAgain Sweater]

Legion Lieutenant

WB

Uncommon 2/2

Vampire Knight

All other vampires get +1/+1

The flavor text has a distinct "Mr Burns from the Simpsons" feel.

Tribal all day in rivals.

[Mnemosyne]

Okay you've been talking about them, but i've put the pictures up!

Some uncommons in rival colours


Merfolk


Vampires


Dinosaurs


Some selected rares I thought were the best of the rares released today.


These aren't great rares, in my opinion

[Soren841]

They're really pushing merfolk

[Firegriff]

Looks like an interesting set.

This is something I'd expect in an Un set...


A nice addition for Vamps.

[HowlingLotus]

I'm a fan of the Elder Dino cycle and respect the choice to do so (considering blue and black only got a mono-coloured dino each).

Seeing as I mainly play casual/kitchen table I will of course be focusing effort on making a stupid and poorly executed Polyraptor deck (EVERYONE, GET IN HERE!).

I was waiting for Rivals to make a dinosaur EDH and it looks like there are plenty of new toys to mash together with what Ixalan gave us. I'm also looking at W/B Vampire or even splashing Red in to give more options - lots of life gain shenanigans to be had.

Then there is Merfolk, where I'm not sure if I want to make an aggressive low curve deck or a go wide theme EDH.

[grollm]

They're really pushing merfolk

If the last few sets have been any indication they are pushing tribal. Before this block it was Eldrazi. Now it's Merfolk, Dinosaurs,  and Pirates.

[robort]

Allready found some combos.. first Everdawn Champion with say Curious Obsession or Tilonalli's Crown

Then what better way to have fun with saprolings ... attack with Raging Regisaur and then 1 damage to Overgrown Armasaur  and Tendershoot Dryad. You'll have 3 1/1's saprolings before your next combat step.

[CardAgain Sweater]

Allready found some combos.. first Everdawn Champion with say Curious Obsession or Tilonalli's Crown

Then what better way to have fun with saprolings ... attack with Raging Regisaur and then 1 damage to Overgrown Armasaur  and Tendershoot Dryad. You'll have 3 1/1's saprolings before your next combat step.

It is a little mana-intensive, but I wanna do this at prerelease: Forerunner of the Empire and Polyraptor from Rivals of Ixalan, paired with Sheltering Light from Ixalan.

[Firegriff]

From what I see, Commander decks have lots of love here.  If I get my hands on Zetalpa, I will find a way to get here in my Anafenza, the Foremost deck with Odric, Lunarch Marshal 

[Soren841]

The new set is mostly for commander tbh

[HowlingLotus]

Maybe getting back into the game a year ago hasn't been enough time, but it's surprising to see how many people are taking a dump on the Ixalan block (now that Rivals was spoiled). I get that not everyone is a fan of EDH and Standard doesn't always care about tribal, but a set like this here and there shouldn't be too harmful. I guess because I don't play competitively I look at the sets different.   

[G. Moto]

  The the thing with this set is that a lot of the tribal cards do help create stronger synergies when it comes to deck building. And even if you don't build Dinos, Vamps, Merfolks or Pirates you can still build some sweet rouge decks. As far as competitive there are some decent cards that can help structure some solid decks. Merfolks have great ways to counter and cancel spells, Vamps can grind out some games by getting the lifegain advantage, Dinos are obviously the brutes of this set but they have their own built in combat tricks. This set has a lot to offer.

[CardAgain Sweater]

The tribal push is good with the problem of the various energy decks being able to slot in the best card(s) from a new set, as happened with glorybringer, scarab god, carnage tyrant. Say a new card is just 'decent', a playable card that needs tribal support - which is tough to impossible for energy decks as they need energy cards, and those energy cards are 4 or 5 different creature types none of them pirate, vampire, merfolk, or dinosaurs - and those new 'decent' cards get a lot better with tribal backing. I like it.

If they didn't put in another answer for energy, this at least stops energy decks from cherry picking each set to get even more dominant.