Vascular Awareness: Spoiler? I'll give 'er the world!

Mason here again, this week I'll be going over last week's spoilers in a modern context.  I may even give a deck list or two.  They'll be rough sketches, but should at least serve as good jumping off points.  Now, first thing's first, I'm going to discuss how I plan to go about discussing spoilers since I hold strong opinions on how this should be done.  First of all this will all be done in a modern context, any time you talk about spoilers ever you should be completely clear.  I don't want to hear anything like this happening:

"This card is garbage"
"Are you kidding? It's the best card in the set!"

The card?  Sylvan Primordial, one hoping for a modern powerhouse, the other raring and ready to blink this 100 times in their commander deck.  Both people are right, both just engaged in an asinine conversation.  This can happen even when both players talking about constructed formats.  To avoid this I'll be talking nearly exclusively about modern and will make it clear when I am not.  Second order of business:  I will try to avoid talking about cards that have better versions, I don't want to wade knee deep through limited filler to discuss the handful of gems and you don't want that either.  I will note that if a card has a better version but can serve a "five through eight" role in a deck it WILL be discussed.  Finally, the flip side of this point is that any card without a clear analogue should and will be discussed because not many people(including myself) are smart enough to immediately peg which new and unique effects will be all-stars.  This is how the entire world convinces itself that Chandra sucks before the have even opened an M14 pack.  The card has now seen play all the way down to Legacy and all the way up to Standard.  So with these philosophies laid out let us begin.

First up we have quite a doozy on our hands.  Eidolon of Blossoms gives us the first look at a solid "enchantment matters" card for the set and this one gets me excited for a few reasons:  First of all the cost is fairly efficient, compared to Verduran Enchantress it costs one more but cantrips.  Cantripping is typically priced at an additional 2, for modern I'd argue the costing of cantripping is probably more fair at 1.5 but either way this card starts off better than the current option which is a good start.  Note the additional 2 power is not the selling point here since you want to draw cards with this, not bum rush the opponent.  Another major point is that this counts enchantments entering play, not when they are cast.  This is worse against countermagic which isn't the worst thing since countermagic is anemic in modern anyways.  It's still worth noting though.  The boon from this point comes in when you start looking at the ways to "cheat" enchantments into play.  There is already a fringe enchantment based ramp deck roaming the halls and this slots in quite well.  This is especially relevant for builds involving Genesis Wave.  With a double G in the mana cost this card also helps out Nykthos build as well.  I know which deck I'll be trying her out in first and I'll definitely be keeping her in mind for other enchantment decks as well, prison and Open the Vaults are two immediate thoughts, although admittedly Open the Vaults probably won't pan out. 

I can already hear the clacking of keys preparing to write angry comments about my inclusion of this, but hear me out.  This effect has not been made available for every color and while there are usually better options withing the colors, it may be a solid "five through eight" card for mono colored swarm decks.  Blue and red don't really have the best access to this effect so I'd say to simply keep this one in mind.  Part of brewing is knowing your options so making sure you note this card's existence can only be a good thing.

Cards that screw with the top card of player's libraries are often times strong.  I do not have the ability to parse the strength of this card(since it is one of the most bonkers weird cards spoiled in a long time), but I won't be all that shocked if someone makes a clean break with this card.  

This card is sooooo cool.  The biggest issue with Howling Mine effects is getting the effect after your opponent does, no longer!  This card puts the symmetry in your favor, allows you to tempo countermagic based decks, and all at a reasonable cost for the effect.  I fully expect Time Warp decks to adopt this one and to great effect.  Do I expect the deck to shoot to tier one over this card/  probably not, but every little bit helps.  Here is a sketch of a build of Turbo Time Warp that plans to do a whole lot of playing on the opponent's turn:

4 Dictate of Kuphrix

3 Quicken

4 Time Warp

4 Temporal Mastery

3 Walk the Aeons

4 Snapcaster Mage

3 Gigadrowse

2 Fog

4 Cryptic Command

4 Remand

3 Howling Mine

4 Misty Rainforest

4 Hinterland Harbor

2 Breeding Pool

1 Forest

11 Island

No one plays Vulshok Battlergear and this is a harder to cast version 99 percent of the time as no one is blocking your buffed guy usually and if the swing in it's usually an alpha strike, the swords see surprisingly little play and are better most of the time.

This will probably go down as one of the better cards in the set.  You can pretty much count the cards not triggered by this on one maybe two hands.  At the very worst it is sicko anti storm tech for burn decks, but honestly I wouldn't be stunned if this were main decked, the damage output if not immediately removed is insane, and if he is removed you'll get some damage out of him anyways, something not every card can boast.

Note about the gods: Ari Lax nailed this best when he said the gods would have a tough time in modern due to how often permanents are removed.  This hasn't been universally true but it has been a solid guide while trying to evaluate the gods for modern.  The gods spoiled as of the time of this writing have held to this(Keranos, Kuphrix, and Iroas) and I expect the others to hold to this once spoiled.

The removal in modern is world class but once you restrict yourself to one color like the rogue's favorite Skred red deck you sometimes need to go for the more obscure(like Skred).  Like Skred the damage on this scales reasonably but probably not as quickly, unlike Skred this scrys which is huge for a deck with such little velocity(the speed at which you go through your deck).  Both only target creatures, but with Boros Reckoner acting as the grease card for the deck this liability is not too huge.  I'm unsure if this will be added but if you are a fan of the archetype it'll be worth testing.

Sometimes you want 8 City of Brass, now you have that.  

Mindslaver is a strong effect and while there isn't a clear home for this card at the moment it is something to keep in mind while deckbuilding.  Perhaps a Tron list wants it, perhaps it spawns yet another variation of the Time Warp deck(so you can take their turns too).

That's it for our thoughts so far, check back soon when and and i'll tell you what I think about the rest of them!