Hello and welcome back to the Magic Super Cube!

If you don’t know, this is the blog where I go through the sets of Magic that at one point in time were Standard legal or would have been Standard legal had the format existed and then choose cards from those sets and add them to what I assume is going to be the largest possible Cube known to Magic.

I genuinely lost track of my days (life is doing what life does) so I am a day late on posting this, but we are here to post it and I do apologize for that.

Today we are going to be taking a look at Saviors of Kamigawa, the last set of Kamigawa block and it wasn’t so difficult to choose cards, more so that a lot of cards were…underwhelming. Even though it is a small set of 165 and still has some interesting cards, overall not too many things really stood out to me as interesting. However this set still has one of my favorite cycles of cards because that cycle has one of my favorite bad mechanics.

Let’s get started!

White

White wasn’t too hard to pick cards from, but I wouldn’t say that it was the easiest to pick from. Solidly in the middle on that front.

The creatures were a bit tricky to pick from because there were a couple of directions that I could go, but I ended up picking something that works decently against burn and aggro decks and a creature that has a benefit playing into a life gain strategy.

The noncreature spells were also a bit tough, barring one option. I have made my choice of choosing the cycle of cards that I mentioned earlier, purely because I enjoy the bad mechanic and think that in a limited environment that cycle would be interesting to play with. The other noncreature spell I chose works well against go wide decks, which was not an option I knew existed.

My picks for white are Enduring Ideal, Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker, Reverence, and Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant.

Blue

Of the five colors, blue was shockingly the easiest to pick from when normally it sits in the middle of how hard it is to pick cards from.

Apart from the cycle choice, there was a bevy of options to choose from for the noncreature card. I decided that the best card would be a way to interact with spells in a way that blue can do, but isn’t a counter spell.

The creatures were also pretty easy to pick, with one of the creatures being a very well known Commander and the other, while not a legendary card, does play well in Commander in a particular strategy, even in a 1v1 can play in an interesting way if supported properly.

My picks for blue are Eternal Dominion, Kami of the Crescent Moon, Sakashima the Imposter, and Twincast.

Black

Black, when compared to other colors and from previous sets, was actually pretty tough to pick cards from.

The noncreature spells were pretty easy. The cycle choice was of course coming in, but this set also happens to have a card that has been embraced for not being a great card, unless you happen to play it in a very specific sort of way.

The creatures were where I had the most trouble with. Not a lot of the creatures really interested me or presented dramatically interesting play styles, in my opinion. In the end I chose a creature that affected hand size and a creature that can be a control piece if played against the right deck.

My picks for black are Gnat Miser, Neverending Torment, One with Nothing, and Razorjaw Oni.

Red

Red was also also a little tricky to pick from, though not as much as black.

The creatures were not as much of an issue and the creatures I have chosen was an early threat that can be useful in particular strategies later on and the other creature is one that is near and dear to me because it was the first Commander I ever covered on this website.

The noncreature spells was where things got tougher. Other than the cycle pick, I was stuck between two other choices for a noncreature spell. One added mana and the other was an interesting way to potentially win the game, and I prefer interesting game choices when choosing cards for this Cube.

My picks for red are Adamaro, First to Desire, Glitterfang, Hidetsugu’s Second Rite, and Undying Flames.

Green

Between the five colors, I would have to say that green was the second easiest to pick cards from, though there was a back and forth on one card.

The creatures were pretty easy to pick from, one was picked because not only will it play well with some cards from this set, but as we approach more current sets it will become much better in the long run and the other creature plays into a creature type that should start getting more support in this Cube.

The noncreature spell, that wasn’t the cycle card, was where I had a bit of a back and forth with. It wasn’t as bad as it was with red, but I decided on choosing a card that helps green deal with an ability in a different way then they would normally deal with creatures that have that ability.

My picks for green are Dense Canopy, Endless Swarm, Promished Kannushi, and Reki, the History of Kamigawa.

Multicolored, Artifacts, and Lands

Lumping all of these into one category again, but there isn’t as much fanfare as I had from the previous set by comparison.

There is only one multicolored card in this set, so naturally I chose it and it can actually play in an interesting typal space, though you would need to cheat it out in some capacity.

I didn’t pick all the lands from this set, despite there being only four lands, and that was because two of the lands were not that great. Instead I chose lands that produced colorless mana and had some more general utility.

The artifacts of this set, in comparison to the previous sets of this block, are not as strong some of the previous artifacts, barring potentially one.

The ones I chose provides an interesting potential synergy with typal strategies that rely on the graveyard, a way to bounce something or take damage, a way to punish an opponent from having too many cards in hand and a way to reward you for having a lot of cards in hand, a cheap to cast and attach Equipment, a way to give a creature you control evasion or protect it in combat, and a card that has become an iconic side board card.

My pick for multicolored is Iname as One. My picks for lands are Mikokoro, Center of the Sea and Miren, the Moaning Well. My picks for artifacts are Ashes of the Fallen, Blood Clock, Ebony Owl Netsuke, Ivory Crane Netsuke, O-Naginata, Pithing Needle, and Soratami Cloud Chariot.

In Conclusion

Saviors of Kamigawa was a bit of a disappointment when compared to the other sets of Kamigawa block, but there were still some pretty interesting choices.

When we return the Magic Super Cube, hopefully on time, we are going to be looking at Ninth Edition. Being that it is a traditional Core set we can pick up some cards to help fill up the Cube with useful utility cards and it also has 359 cards to choose from so there will be plenty of options.

As usual, here is the Moxfield link to keep up with all the cards in the Cube and here is the second part of it Moxfield II!

See you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual