Hello! Welcome to my set review of March of the Machine, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.

Given that March of the Machine (aka MOM) also comes out with a set of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.

Without further ado, here are my favourite Red cards!

  1. Urabrask // The Great Work

Surprising absolutely no one, Urabrask is at the top of this list. It’s a Birgi, God of Storytelling for instants and sorceries and half a Guttersnipe in damage and targets on one four mana 4/4 first striker. Build a burn deck around this and go absolutely ham. Toss in Fiery Emancipation and every Faithless Looting is also a Bolt!

Plus after just three instants and sorceries in a turn, you can pay A SINGLE RED MANA to flip Urabrask into The Great Work which can absolutely wreck an opponent’s board and hit them for three to the face. Next chapter leaves you three Treasures to prepare you for the ULTIMATE Past in Flames that allows you to cast instants and sorceries from ANY graveyard. I’m calling  this the best Praetor of the bunch. Easily. It’ll have to be in spellslinger shells only but my god, what a pay off.

  1. Voldaren Thrillseeker

A Vampire that knows how to have fun. Toss this in a Jund deck with Yargle and Multani. For three mana, you can make this a 3/3 that becomes a Lightning Bolt as its sacrifice ability, or you can give another creature +2/+2 and give it that same ability.

+1/+1 counter decks are going to like this. Vampire decks will like this. Brion Stoutarm decks if there are still around, let’s get you a back up plan. I think this card is a lot of fun. It’s fun and goofy!

  1. Invasion of Tarkir // Defiant Thundermaw

One of the best Dragons ever printed is on the back of a battle. An Amplify-able Shock for two that becomes a Tarkir inspired Dragon like the Dragonlords with triggered abilities for when Dragons attack turning each attack into a Shock of their own. The Ur-Dragon, any red Dragon deck, they all want this. Maybe not Scion of the Ur-Dragon because this can’t be tutored, but I’m sure players who have a Scion deck are still gonna jam this.

  1. Chandra, Hope’s Beacon

As a passive ability alone, Chandra, Hope’s Beacon is a Double Vision, which is already an insane start. The -X on a 5 loyalty planeswalker is dealing that much damage to up to two targets. You can +2 for two mana of whatever combo you need and the +1 helps you dig for that instant or sorcery you need right now.

The +1 is tough because you can only cast a single instant or sorcery from among them, but with the other abilities, Chandra is a heavyweight that will make a splash in spellslinger decks no doubt. Or big mana decks that need the fixing. Man, the alt art version is so sick.

  1. Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is the OG creature cloning as token legend. Jaxis, the Troublemaker and Rionya, Fire Dancer both have been extremely popular. Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink brings a different wrinkle to the playstyle by allowing you to cash in on big mana and making FIVE tokens. A repeatable kicked Rite of Replication on an ability is fantastic. Dockside Extortionist is busted enough, but there are cards like Red Dragon that read “nug the table for 20 a piece” when Orthion makes copies of it. Hell, you could target Wrathful Red Dragon and then play Blasphemous Act to send six instances of 13 damage around or finish someone off with 78 damage

Orthion and Jaxis share similar space for me and I’ll be using them interchangeably with the other in the 99 for a while. It’s a lot of fun and I highly recommend this kind of commander!

Honourable Mentions

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