The Brothers' War Set Review

 Alright, the spoiler list is out and here we go!

I've been pretty down on this set but a couple things I have liked, mechanically, has been Unearth and Prototype. 

Unearth fits perfectly with the Brothers' War storyline, and Prototype is not only a sort of reverse Kicker mechanic but also meshes well with the story overall!

They did good with these and I'm glad to say so. 

What they did bad is something that is very much a "my headspace" thing BUT: artifacts with only colorless casting costs should all be grouped together. They messed with how sets are ordered by adding cards that have no color in the mana value but have an ability/alternate casting cost in with that color. 

This mucks up how I sort cards! I have a lot of Magic cards and have been sorting them a certain way for a long time, using the number of said card to help subsort within my sort. Putting artifacts in like this messes with that and I do not like that. Do not. Alright, I'm done.

The dynamics of The Brothers' War is odd, since this set is ostensibly about two brothers using powerful artifacts to wage war, snowballing a verdant land that wants nothing to do with them or their artifacts. 

So W/U/B/R all have a strong artifact tie-in, while G should sit out on its own with land themes and minor artifact ties.

White
I think my favorite card here is Soul Partition. Feels very in theme for the color, as an instant offers the kind of response window you want from this card, and the taxation theme is absolutely on point. Really well done.

Blue
Well, I guess Teferi is taking the crown as the new Jace. Let's print a million of those!

Seriously, why have the major plotlines of Magic centered a Blue mage? Why isn't Jaya or Vivien saving the multiverse? (Jaya being dead now that's more of a challenge but still!)

Black
Once again, we have Jeremy Wilson with the awesome art. You won't even have to guess. 

I do like Hostile Negotiations. That's a cool take on Fact or Fiction! I don't know if it'll make as big an impact but the potential is there. And it's certainly a fun subgame. 

Red
I wish cards like Draconic Destiny said "when this creature leaves play" instead of "when this creature dies" because it would help make exile effects less annoying. Cool card though.

I'd also like to see more land destruction, now that Fall of Kroog is reminding me of that. Except I'd like it to be non-basic land destruction. Reward us for basics!

Green
Audacity is not bad as a fixed Rancor. Seems absolutely playable and useful in any deck that would like more copies of Rancor.

I would like to know why Green, the anti-artifact color has more artifacts with a colored activated ability/association than any other except White (they're tied). 

Can they think of no way to bring artifacts to green? Should they? 

Gold
I got nothing here. They're all fine, I suppose? They don't stand out as doing something particularly awesome. 

Artifact/Land
This is where I expect to see some cool stuff! The set is about artificers doing artificer things! Let's GOoooooo o o   o   o     o

Hm.

For me there are two interesting elements here: the Worker cycle, one for each Urza's land, and The Stasis Coffin..which is also a callback. 

How is it that the artificers set has no innovative artifacts?

I don't want to be grumpy about it. I do think the Urza Workers cards are neat and the Stasis Coffin is interesting! But this was the area where The Brothers' War should've made its case to justify the set and I'm not seeing it. 

Ah well. At least the rest of the painlands are back, so manafixing is in order, and Demolition Field is more nonbasic land hate. 

But there we have it. The Brothers' War, the definitive telling of a story that set up the entire Magic universe feels like a skippable set. I wish they'd taken more risks but I suppose this set just wasn't trying to shake things up that much.