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On the penultimate day of Magic: The Gathering’s Dominaria United preview season, it’s worth sitting back and appreciating what this set is offering. After two radically new sets in bold, modern settings, it’s nice to return to the traditional, fantasy world of Magic. Full of returning faces and deep cuts to old Magic lore, it’s a home run for any Vorthos. It’s also a shockingly powerful set, with this new Standard format getting the juicy, borderline broken cards we’ve been lacking in the past year.

RELATED: Magic: The Gathering's Dominaria United Previews – Day Six Highlights

Day seven of Dominaria United’s preview season gave us a new legendary-matters commander worth playing, an Izzet (red/blue) wizard who’ll make your spellslinger decks a tad more aggro, and a blue enchantment that will easily be a new combo engine to watch. Here are the best cards revealed on the penultimate day of Dominaria United’s previews.

Vesuvan Duplimancy

Vesuvan-Duplimancy-1

Three generic, one blue enchantment:

Whenever you cast a spell that targets only a single artifact or creature you control, create a token that’s a copy of that artifact or creature, except it’s not legendary.

Sometimes when you read a card, its potential hits you in waves. It starts as a “wow, this is like Orvar the All-Form from Kaldheim”. Then it progresses to “wait, Orvar was easily the best legendary creature in that set, and this only costs four mana”.

Then it hits you that there’s another card in Dominaria United that will love it: Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief. Suddenly, you’re spending a few cheap mana value spells to make a ton of copies of Ivy, with each additional Ivy copying those spells each time, before you drop a big combat on all of them and go smash. It isn’t quite an infinite combo, but with Vesuvan Duplimancy you’ll be setting yourself up for a big turn very quickly.

In a set full of splashy bombs and new format staples, Vesuvan Duplimancy is possibly the wildest one of them all.

Jodah, the Unifier

Jodah the Unifier MTG

One white, one blue, one black, one red, one green legendary creature – Human Wizard – 5/5:

Legendary creatures you control get +X/+X, where X is the number of legendary creatures you control.

Whenever you cast a legendary spell from your hand, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a legendary nonland card with lesser mana value. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

One of Dominaria’s most famous names is back to offer us a slightly downgraded version of Kaldheim’s The Prismatic Bridge, but with a big payoff if you’re running lots of legendary creatures.

The second ability is cascade in all but name, giving you a way to cheat cheaper legendary nonland permanents into play off of just one cast. On its own this would’ve been a great WUBRG effect, but adding in a buff that gets bigger the more legends you get into play could make this a more effective legends-matter Commander than even this set’s precon lead, Dihada, Bender of Wills.

RELATED: Magic: The Gathering's Dominaria United Previews – Day Five Highlights

Balmor, Battlemage Captain

Balmor-Battlemage-Captain-1

One blue, one red legendary creature – Bird Wizard – 1/3:

Flying

Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, creatures you control get +1/+0 and gain trample until end of turn.

The signpost for Dominaria’s blue/red spellslinging archetype, Balmor is going to be a horrific force to deal with in a lot of Standard and Pioneer decks.

As soon as this card was revealed, lots of people were comparing it to Adeliz, the Cinder Wind from our last trip to Dominaria. However, Balmor is likely more effective in a wider variety of decks: in spell slingers it’s a win condition, it costs less than Adeliz, and it doesn’t only buff up Wizard creatures.

With how many cheap instants and sorceries this incoming Standard format has, it’s not unreasonable to assume Balmor will be an incredibly powerful way to close out the game all on his own. It’s not even as though your opponent can stop you from popping off, as you can continue to just cast instant spells over almost any removal they throw at you.

RELATED: Magic: The Gathering's Dominaria United Previews – Day Four Highlights

Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim

Elas-Il-Kor-Sadistic-Pilgrim-1

One white, one black legendary creature – Phyrexian Kor Cleric – 2/2:

Deathtouch

Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you gain one life.

Whenever another creature you control dies, each opponent loses one life.

Although Zendikar Rising is rotating out of Standard, this Kor Cleric is a nice reminder of the fun we once had there. Bringing a hint of the popular Soul Sisters archetype back to Standard, Elas il-Kor will love both the Soldier-token producing archetype of white in this set, as well as the Aristocrats and sacrifice subthemes of black.

While it’s cool to see a Phyrexian Kor, Elas’ power doesn’t feel too much greater than non-legendary cards we’ve seen in the past, like Kor Celebrant and Bastion of Remembrance. Would Standard have broken so much had Elas not been legendary?

It does pair very nicely with The Meathook Massacre (once it’s already wiped the board), though, which could open up some scary synergies even without the ability of doubling up on Elas.

Tear Asunder

Tear-Asunder-1

One generic, one green instant:

Kicker: one generic, one black

Exile target artifact or enchantment. If this spell was kicked, exile target nonland permanent instead.

Poor Return To Nature. Guaranteed a spot in the upcoming rotation with its Innistrad: Midnight Hunt release, only to be made almost completely redundant with Tear Asunder.

Exiling an artifact or enchantment for two mana is incredible already, but being kickable to exile any kind of nonland permanent instead makes this one of the best black/green removal tools in the current format. If you need something really, really gone, this is the way to go about it.

Of course, Tear Asunder doesn’t have the graveyard hate of Return To Nature, which still gives it some use. Not a whole lot, and we’ll likely see a lot less of it now, but at least it isn’t totally obsolete.

NEXT: Every Card In Magic: The Gathering's Dominaria United Legends' Legacy Commander Precon