[SCD] Regal Caracal

[morgan_coke]

Regal Caracal
Rare
3WW
Creature - Cat
Other Cats you control get +1/+1 and Lifelink. When ~ comes into play, put two 1/1 Cat tokens onto the battlefield.

I'm mostly just posting this because I just did a fair bit of standard testing on MTGO. I was still putting stuff together and didn't want to pay the day 1 prices for Angel of Sanctions so I grabbed four of these to fill the slots.

Um, this is going to see a LOT of play in standard. Like, a LOT. I forced Vehicles, UW, and Temur Energy players to ragequit with this. It's a stupid good card for shutting down aggro and creature plans.

Mostly I just wanted to let everyone here who was excited to see a LORD OF TEH KITTEHS printed know that this thing is legit, and very, very strong.

Also, just like I remembered from back in the day, trying to play aggro in a format with Renewed Faith is a very losing proposition. So, if you want to see standard players cry about OP control strats, just wait a few weeks.

[Begle1]

Standard is an interesting puzzle box right now. Vehicles and SaheeliCat are both great decks and nobody has found something with game against both. Heart of Kiran/ Toolcraft Exemplar/ Unlicensed Disintegration/ Scrapheap Scrounger/ Gideon is a strong core. Thing is, Ishkanah is better at slowing down that deck than Caracal is, and it isn't good enough, so I doubt Caracal is a Vehicles killer. Maybe a piece of the puzzle, but I'm not seeing it. Got a decklist?

[morgan_coke]

Standard is an interesting puzzle box right now. Vehicles and SaheeliCat are both great decks and nobody has found something with game against both. Heart of Kiran/ Toolcraft Exemplar/ Unlicensed Disintegration/ Scrapheap Scrounger/ Gideon is a strong core. Thing is, Ishkanah is better at slowing down that deck than Caracal is, and it isn't good enough, so I doubt Caracal is a Vehicles killer. Maybe a piece of the puzzle, but I'm not seeing it. Got a decklist?

It's more if you look at the card pool that was available in standard, it lacked in exile effects, card advantage, mana acceleration, and pure draw spells. By a lot. It's not really surprising then that the three colors that lack those things normally - Red, White, and Black, were the strongest, especially when paired with vehicles. There was also a large lack of lifelink in the format.

I think the Caracal goes into Saheeli Rai decks easily. It buffs and comboes with Felidar Cub, it's a great target for Rai herself - with two Caracals on the field, you have 20 power of ilfelink, it's nuts - heck, you could probably build CopyCat with Regal, Reservoir, and Sovereign to have an alt-como of "lifeing" someone out pretty easily. GW Tokens probably makes a comeback and runs Regal as well.

The biggest changes I'd say are you can now run Grafstone, so everyone has access to mana ramp, there is a LOT better removal now, and things like Cast Out, Angel of Sanctions and Never//Return provide answers to a lot of problems that didn't have them before. Of course, having a green shatter and a white disenchant that both have cycling means every GW deck runs 8 vehicle answers MD that are never dead. I think Cub gets a ban, but it's got a lot more playable hate facing it now than it used to.