Happy Chinese New Year 2022! It is the Year of the Tiger and in Chinese culture, the tiger is the symbol of bravery, wisdom, and strength. I do hope you guys enjoy and are celebrating this occasion and also welcoming the month of February. This also means that we are just weeks away from the release of the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty which will be out this February 18th and so as we continue checking on some of the card spoilers published online.

If you have missed the Batch One blog post, you can check it here. We start on the second batch today with this interesting card named Satsuki, the Living Lore.

With the prevalence of Saga in the upcoming set, I will not be surprised if they will have a full Enchantment Saga deck strategy with a playset of Satsuki in the list. This is no problem as the Legendary rule will just trigger her die ability. She can hasten those Saga that flips to creatures while also being able to recur them from your graveyard.

Next up is Reality Heist.

The first line simply reads as Affinity for Artifacts and digging two artifact cards from the Top seven of your library would mean value for combo decks to dig their components. Standard might come up with a dedicated artifact deck but having this Instant is just going to be a support card as most of the cards are in fair mana costs, meaning no free cards to lessen the heist’s total cost.

This is a useful Green “next-level-pump” card meaning it can also increase lore counters on one of your Saga and also pump your enchantment creatures. The second effect may require more mana to execute but the good thing about Green is their nature of having mana dudes to generate this.

A cheap Rakdos Saga that can sweep tokens with ease and also deals with graveyard shenanigans is a good two-for-one value already and the flip creature side gives you a possibility to actually make them lose the game. Summing up all of the damage plus the +1/+1 counters every turn seems already enough to bring the opponent’s life to zero and that is sort of a win more scenario. Dealing 10 or more damage in a single turn may require some sort of a pump spell or a double-damage effect.

Raiyuu’s “Exalted” effect to one of your Samurai or Warrior gets you another Combat phase which you can then attack with all your creatures. He can basically initiate an alpha strike with that bonus phase. The challenge here is on how you can protect him or your first critter to stay alive before the Declaration of Attackers step. Of course, White is given to have some spells that get your creatures Indestructible until end of turn.

Naomi, Pillar of Order is a good token source with the condition of only having an artifact and an enchantment on the battlefield. This would not be much of a problem since the set supports enchantment and artifact creatures.

I would have expected much of the Blue Land’s Channel ability but an uncounterable bounce spell can be worked around with. This is ideal if you have Saga and creatures that have flipped from a Saga enchantment where you can just bounce them back to reuse their abilities again. The four mana-cost ain’t much of a drawback also as most control decks would likely have enough mana already in the late game for its use.

A Flashy tempo Vehicle that is easy to crew may have a slot most aggro decks in Standard. Tapping their greatest creatures at end of their turn gets you an opening to attack and deal a whole batch of damage on your next combat phase. At its least use, you can just poke in two damage in the air as you continue developing your board.

A two-drop 1/1 with Double Strike pseudo-acts like a 2/2 on its pure form. With a few pump spells, it can just deal a huge amount of damage. Having it late game is also not a disadvantage as you can just use Reconfigure to attach it to your best creature on the board.

Wrapping up part two with a short video explaining the Kamigawa Neon Dynasty mechanic, Modified.