The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI)
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November 10, 2023
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Justin
Find out which commons are best from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. There are some solid options across all colors and archetypes, making it easy to fill out your deck in your next draft.
Image Credit: Magic the Gathering | Artist:
Domenico Cava
Click here for limited ratings of every card from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan.
Every set has commons that define the format. Since most packs have at least 6 commons, these cards are the ones you'll have at your disposal most often. Knowing which to play, and which to avoid, will help you be more consistent in limited formats.
This green removal shines by allowing instant-speed interaction that grants additional power to take down larger creatures, making it an exceptional and highly favorable tool in green's removal suite.
Poison Dart Frog stands out as a versatile green mana accelerant at common, offering color fixing, late-game deathtouch for favorable trades, and an appealing design that makes it a highly desirable mana dork capable of impactful exchanges when its primary use diminishes.
Searchlight Dinosaur stands out as an exceptional four-drop in green, offering solid value as either a 5/4 with surveil or a 4/3 that draws a card, making it a highly desirable common and an effective curve-filler for any green deck.
A 7.2 rating for a common is absurd, but it's deserving. Abrade stands out as the set's top common, offering premium removal capabilities that excel in versatility, especially with the prevalent artifact theme, making it a more potent choice than ever for dealing with a wide array of threats.
Rumbling Rockslide offers reliable removal at sorcery speed for red, efficiently dealing at least 4 damage for four mana, adeptly handling creatures typically challenging for red to remove, embodying simplicity and scalability desirable in a removal spell.
While red may not prioritize early cycling, the versatility of a split card offering both land and an efficiently costed, potent 6-drop dinosaur—appealing for its size and the beneficial land cycling ability—makes it a respectable choice for slower decks seeking flexibility and late-game power.
Join the Dead stands out as potentially the best common in the set, offering premium removal with its -5/-5 effect for just three mana, effectively eliminating most creatures without requiring the full descend 4 condition, making it a highly efficient and versatile spell.
Dead Weight consistently proves itself as a top contender for the best common in any set it appears, offering cost-effective removal or the ability to weaken stronger creatures for just one mana, with the added benefit of enabling descend when it leaves the battlefield, highlighting its flexibility and power.
Mycoid shines as an excellent common, offering a solid 4/3 for four mana with the added benefit of generating tokens throughout the game, rewarding typical black gameplay strategies in the set.
This blue common excels in aerial pressure, leveraging map tokens to occasionally boost creature size and engage with various synergies in the set, positioning it as a highly sought-after card that supports numerous blue archetypes.
Milling one and drawing one offers card parity with the added advantage of filling the graveyard for craft/descend mechanics, and its potential transformation into a 6/6 that can manipulate combat dynamics enhances its appeal, making it a prime inclusion in artifact-centric decks for its multifaceted utility and game-swinging capabilities.
This card, leveraging the explore mechanic, delivers versatile outcomes by offering either a 1/2 creature and a land or a 2/3 creature, each outcome accompanied by deck smoothing, and its ability to mill a permanent makes it particularly effective in formats with the descend mechanic, marking it as a valuable common in this set.
Cloud Guard stands out as a formidable four-drop with three power in flight, necessitating an opponent's response and subsequently generating a Gnome token upon its departure, ensuring value from the exchange and paralleling the success of similar impactful cards in recent formats, suggesting its strong performance in its own right.
Despite the growing skepticism around Pacifism effects in Limited play, Petrify remains an efficient tool for neutralizing threats, standing just below premium removal but highly valued for its ability to handle opposing forces without fueling descend mechanics, and its versatility extends to halting the transformation of craft artifacts, making it a worthy inclusion in decks.
Tinker's Tote, while not outshining all of white's three-drops, offers unique value by providing three artifacts for three mana, synergizing well with artifact-focused, go-wide, or crafting strategies. Its ability to produce a pair of 1/1 tokens and an additional artifact makes it an efficient enabler across various archetypes.
#1 - Rating: 7.2 - Abrade (Red)
#2 - Rating: 6.6 - Join the Dead (Black)
#3 - Rating: 5.8 - Dead Weight (Black)
#4 - Rating: 5.4 - Oltec Cloud Guard (White)
#5 - Rating: 5.0 - Huatli's Final Strike (Green)
#6 - Rating: 4.8 - Petrify (White)
#7 - Rating: 4.8 - Waterwind Scout (Blue)
#8 - Rating: 4.6 - Inverted Iceberg // Iceberg Titan (Blue)
#9 - Rating: 4.6 - Broodrage Mycoid (Black)
#10 - Rating: 4.6 - Rumbling Rockslide (Red)
Black has three of the Top 10 commons, Red, Blue, and White come in with two each, and Green wraps it up with just one.
Click here for limited ratings of every card from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan.
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