These Are a Few of My Favorite Cards: Obligatory “Breakin’ 2” Joke Goes Here

3 min readMar 14, 2020

My short article last week about some cards that I like for EDH got a minor amount of attention, which is all I needed to write another one. Here are some more cards that I think are neat, with a special focus on Standard-legal removal spells!

Dovin’s Veto

Wrathing the board? Cyclonic Rifting to get your opponents out of your way? Dropping a terrifying artifact or enchantment? Playing a Teferi’s Protection to save your own skin? To quote my friend who adores dropping this on my spells, “Get out of here with that bullshit”. Dovin’s Veto deals with so many problems in a unstoppable* way, you should run it if you’re in Azorius.

insert corner case here

Return to Nature

The same friend who wrecks me with Dovin’s Veto has also wrecked me with Return to Nature. If you’re still running Naturalize in your decks, I demand you take them out of those decks, put them in a box, put that box in a bag, go to your local game store, take the box out of the bag, open the box, take the Naturalizes out of the box, say “I’d like to donate these to the bulk box”, find out if the bulk box is a thing, ask to search the bulk box if it is, find the same number of Return to Natures as Naturalizes you took out, pay for those Naturalizes and maybe a booster or two because LGSes could use the help these days, put your newly purchased Return to Natures back in your box, put your box back into your bag, return home, and put those Return to Natures in your decks RIGHT NOW.

I mean it can do one more thing than Naturalize and that thing is pretty useful.

Crush Contraband

Enchantments are big now, thanks to Theros. Powerful artifacts are always in season. I mean, just last week, one of the most popular and influential Commander writers in the game recommended you play Mirrormade, which can be either! Crush Contraband is instant speed, hits two targets, and exiles, which is great against anyone running any sort of graveyard recursion (so, you know, anyone).

Despark

I thought this was going to be huge when War of the Spark came out, but I guess Narset and Teferi took the wind out of everyone else’s sails. No matter, Despark still hits tons of targets, costs two mana, and exiles!

Expansion // Explosion

Okay I’ve never actually cast this but clunky naming convention aside it seems sweet. One half is a Fork/Twincast for cheap spells, the other is a fixed Invoke the Firemind?

ALK’s #MTGFinance corner aka cheap pickup of the week

Castle Garenbrig is the castle that everyone said was “meh”, because all it does is make you more mana, which seems kind of good? for a land?? I guess you could pay 4 mana and tap your land to scry 2 with Castle Vantress but IDK I’d rather just cast more spells! Anyway this card can be found for under two bucks on TCG and fits into a ton of decks.

Thanks for joining me on this journey! I hope you learned something, because I sure didn’t. Follow me on Twitter at @altersalk or even support my work at my Patreon!