Journey Into Nyx Set Review: Utility and Mana

Hello! Welcome back to The General Zone's review of Journey into Nyx! This is the final installment, so if you missed the first three parts you can find them here: Legends Threats Answers . Today, we will be going over the mana and utility cards.

Mana is self-explanatory, this category includes anything that produces mana or puts extra lands into play. Utility cards are somewhat harder to classify. This includes things that expands the functionality of your deck. They let you do different things that threats and answers don't normally do like drawing cards or searching through your deck. Many different kinds of cards fall into this category, but as always, an explanation of why is important.

This is going to get some people, that is for sure. Flash makes a huge addition to any pump effect, particularly a team-wide boost. This has an appropriate cost for its effect as well and is likely to be a shoe-in for token decks like Rhys the Redeemed or Darien.

I love the flavor behind these dictate cards as well. There is an established motif of divine intervention in Greek mythology. This is a perfect mechanical adaptation of the late-hour deus ex machina moment so often used to resolve seemingly un-winnable problems; a common element of classical literature. The nyx-infused image of the gods matches perfectly with Terese Nielsen's style. It is almost as if this visual theme was created just to leverage the stirring power of her art.


So this is an expensive equipment that is also expensive to equip, and doesn't really generate any value for you. Exiling blockers...why even block? Unless you are going to chump that is, but Godsend doesn't punish them at all for chumping. Also, in a format that restricts you to playing only a single copy of any card, the 'meddling' effect will have almost no value. Once again a home run flavor hit that falls flat in constructed.

Speaking of that flavor, it is spicy. Normally, I try to keep flavor rants to a minimum, but this exceeds my threshold for awesomeness. If people know YOUR name, you must be pretty cool. If your weapon is so famous that it has its own name? You are a master badass. It reminds me of old school JRPGs. Everyone's final weapon always had a sweet name. If you are going to stab somebody, wouldn't you rather stab them a spear called the Venus Gospel?


This is a strange card to evaluate. On the one hand: Flash allows you to bypass the lamentable cost of symmetry that plagues cards like Howling Mine. Your opponent got to draw first and also had a chance to remove it before you could benefit from it at all. Dictate fixes that completely and that is an incredible benefit. On the other hand, the only decks that are playing this style of card right now actually want their opponents drawing the cards. Nekusar. I drill it so often because it just refuses to go away. These decks are popular right now, but are also getting better as more tools show up in each new set. If this has no place in a Nekusar deck, it has no place in Commander. Unfortunate, but at this point, very true.


It's the riddle of cards! For all the people who played with Riddle of Lightning in Time Spiral, this set has a lot of nostalgia packed in between the reprinting of the aforementioned card and now this Blue iteration. CMCs can get pretty big in Commander, so you could conceivably net a bunch of cards from this, but even if you average 4-6, this probably isn't worth it. There are just better prospects for drawing cards, even at the same converted mana cost.


Recursion. Card advantage. Blue. This is basically what wins in Commander right? How could it not be good? Compared to Call to Mind, you get one extra card for one extra Blue mana. Compared to Spelltwine you don't get to cast them for free, but this has a much more reasonable cost. Both of those are far out on the fringes of playability though. It is unclear what impact, if any, this is going to have, but I can think of some decks, like Talrand, that would want this.

Once again, Flash really pushes this cycle over the top. At Sorcery-speed you would drop this into play and your opponent would get time to consider the relative benefits of attacking into your inferior board. Now, you set up some chump blocks and play this mid-combat. Want to know what your friends look like with their pants down? This is a window into that possibility space.

I dig the creative concept of: extreme close-up art + badass narration. As always, the flavor text could have been better. In this case, a more succinct form of this message would have delivered more punch, but the art and the flavor combine beautifully to give this card a very cinematic feel.


In the case of this and Dictate of Erebos, the mana costs are higher, but less color intensive than their historical comparables Furnace of Rath and Grave Pact, respectively. In general, I don't think that alters their playability much, but it certainly opens up the possibility of this card being played in more decks; decks with a wider variety of strategies at that. I can think of many decks that would want this, mostly R/W or mono Red, but my main question is whether or not those decks are even good enough to consider 'relevant'. Historically, those have been two of the worst color combinations in the format. Flash actually adds remarkably little to the effect of this card, since it is unlikely you would want to play this in a race situation anyway. You want this if you are beating down and they are trying to stabilize, so the opponent stands to gain very little from this effect being that they aren't attacking in that situation.


This on the other hand, is greatly enhanced by Flash. Although for this price you can easily find a 'mana doubler' effect that doesn't grant any benefit to your opponent. Still, if you put this in your deck, you should be set up much better to take advantage of it than anyone else. EOT this bad boy, play an Eldrazi, clean up shop, and start a new game.



Ugh...this is a very expensive, very fragile enchantress effect. People will play this, but it isn't good. Don't get any ideas of riding to value town on this broken down jalopy.

Does it have a face? This thing reminds me of Pyramid Head in Silent Hill....except with flowers.



I play Rampant Growth. This is worse than Rampant Growth, but not by so much that I think it is unplayable. It is strange, the simplest effects are hard to ruin. You just need a way to get more lands in play. After the dust settles, it doesn't matter so much what you used to do it.


Very few cards in the history of the game include the phrase "choose one or both". With the exception of Dawn to Dusk, I have played all of them in Commander. Modal spells are excellent within the game, choice is just always going to be better than no choice in the hands of a skilled player. In my heart, I like to think of this as part of a super-cycle with Grim Discovery and Remember the Fallen. In my fantasy I am looking forward to the hypothetical Red and Blue versions. What will they be like? How awesome will they be? Will anyone ever love these cards as much as I do?


I am sure that this effect is insane. I am not sure if the card is insane overall. It has the right cost at CMC 2. It has some good colors in Blue and Black. It has decent stats for its price. I feel like, if you can trigger this a few times, you are almost certainly going to win. This effect offers much more raw power than Merfolk Looter, a card that is crazy underrated by people in literally every format. I look forward to trying this in a couple different brews.


Deathtouch would have really made this a spicy card. I think certain decks want this, but there are already so many excellent graveyard enablers that this will be competing for some very tight spots. I don't think this is really going to cut it, but I welcome the chance to be proven wrong.


This is okay, as most all of the anthem effects in existence are playable, but I do think there already exists a wealth of superior options. The fact that this is colorless is going to cause it to show up in many more decks than it really should. People playing only one color will shoehorn this into a deck where it isn't appropriate. I say this at the risk of sounding elitist, but there is a nuanced sophistication that can, and will, be signaled by choosing NOT to play this card out of context. What does that all mean? Don't play this. It will make you look smart.

So Elspeth has her own museum exhibit? I am sure that is what she was hoping for when she graduated from planeswalker school.


City of Brass is rarely played as it is, despite the overpopulation of five-color nonsense decks. There are a half-dozen printings of City as well, so anyone who wanted to play it could certainly afford a copy. Based on that information, I can't say that this will be any different. People will play this in lieu of more expensive options like fetch lands or shocks, but that doesn't make it a good idea. There isn't really a place for this in a tight list.

Also: Flavor text RUINS cards. The water in a plane/planet/strawberry cheesecake cannot be older than the plane itself...IT IS THE PLANE! A place is just a collection of things that share a location. I dare say that the employees of Wizards may be lacking in their knowledge of how planets are formed. Or perhaps they are trying to make a 'story', with 'flavor'. Just...special.


It seems as though Wizards, and I for that matter, have saved the best for last. I love the temple cycle. It has power, presence, and is getting the notoriety that it deserves. U/R and G/B are two of the premier color combinations in Commander and we have been eagerly awaiting the completion of our temple collections.

And with that, our shared time draws to a close, friends. I know I enjoyed it and I hope that you did as well. As always, you can get at us in the comments. What do you think of the new cards? As for what is up next, we are back to our old tricks, with some new spice added in. The regular article schedule will resume next week and we will get our first treat from new co-author The Zachroling.