It’s that lovely time again when a new Magic: The Gathering (MTG) set is upon us, this time with the Lost Caverns of Ixalan prerelease event- here to reintroduce us to the dino-tastic plane of Ixalan.

This time, the hunting ground of choice was Strangers at 47- all decked out entirely in Ixalan decor. What I love about the MTG aesthetic is just how many cool concepts you can cram into one setting- even though Ixalan is best known for its dinosaurs and Mesoamerican motifs, the cutout of the Bloodletter of Alcazotz is still there looking like he belongs on the cover of a metal album.

Since caverns are literally part of the name with this Ixalan set, it’s only natural that some ambience is in order- and thankfully Wizards of the Coast was there to provide with a room to make you feel like you were in Ixalan itself- albeit with significantly less threat of being eaten by dinosaurs.

Naturally, there was even a spread showing off the different products for this expansion- this time we get four commander decks, complete with a new packaging that highlights the gameplay for each commander. If my constant referencing of Was Not Was’ Walk The Dinosaur wasn’t a dead giveaway, I’m especially fond of the Veloci-ramp-tor Commander Deck, which promises a lot of mana and a lot of dinosaurs to go with it.

Open The (Packs), Get On The (Table)

Once we’d admired the decor, it was time to duel! Opening the pre-release packs, we got to build our decks. The Pre Release format is always a fun way to test what’s new in a set- this time we decided we’d test out the new Discover keyword ability and take that out for a spin. Thankfully, our opponent had a similar idea, instead building around the Descend keyword ability.

So for the uninitiated, Discover is like a reworked Cascade- when it triggers, you get to exile cards from the top of your deck until you get a nonland card that costs less than the Discover value- which you can cast without paying its cost. Think of it like a more focused version of Etali, Primal Storm’s ability- with a lot of potential to get you cheating out some big creatures into the field or playing powerful cards.

It’s not like you’re potentially exiling cards out of your deck, however- after you resolve Discover, the exiled cards are sent back to the bottom of your deck. Admittedly that does make it harder to combo off of- if you were running a deck which plays around with exile states you’re probably kicking the dirt in frustration. But it also prevents those of us with terrible luck from accidentally exiling cards we could have otherwise used permanently.

What I really like about Discover is that if you build a deck around it it gives you more reason to run searchers- even if you did lose a valuable card in the Discovery, using any kind of searcher will allow you to shuffle the deck and potentially reset your chances of seeing it again.

You even get that with some of the dinosaur cards in Lost Caverns of Ixalan- each sporting a Cycling ability for each of their respective colors, these allow you to pull specific lands from your deck and also shuffle your deck by simply discarding the cards and paying the cycle cost.

On the other hand, Descend seems infinitely terrifying for more aggressive playstyles- if you’ve sent cards to the graveyard this turn, certain cards will have abilities that trigger. While Discover does a good job of working for most colors, Descend seems to be designed almost exclusively for more aggressive decks- any abilities that discard, mill or sacrifice trigger Descend, and abilities like Fathomless Descent can even scale off said destroyed cards.

While we didn’t get the time to try out a Descend-heavy playstyle for ourselves, you can practically feel the kind of combos you can play off it- since it only tracks permanents in your graveyard rather than the amount sent there per turn, Black decks in particular can have little to no problem hitting higher Descend thresholds.

Walk The Dinosaur

I really like how the new Ixalan set aims to use these new abilities. I can easily see some version of these cards where the abilities are much more restrictive- thankfully the version we got works in such a way that they’re much simpler. Stuff like binding abilities to permanents in your graveyard may still favor certain colors over others, but at least I don’t need an encyclopaedia out to remember what it does.

While the pack gods didn’t bless us with a dinosaur stampede deck for the pre release, that doesn’t mean my dino-hunting days are over. The Lost Caverns of Ixalan launches November 17th, and that means less than a week to open up some packs and really go on a prehistoric rampage. Considering the set also includes Jurassic World tie-in cards, who knows? Maybe I can even build that Jeff Goldblum Commander deck I’d always dreamed about.