Alright, got some updates:
These ones are pretty easy to justify. Hollow almost always sucks with this landbase, and it's probably only going to get worse. Top is I guess a controversial cut, but I've found it relatively mid most of the time. That said there's like 4-5 fetches I'm missing I think, it'd definitely improve with those included. At present though, happy enough to not have it mess up my sequences.
Agadeem is one I've just been waiting to find a copy of, and my LGS finally got one at a good price. Ransom is apparently making waves in other formats, and it's nice here too. A cheaper
Fact or Fiction variant is pretty well fine. I love the game theory cards, and I think it could be fairly good. The tempt mechanic is I guess neither here nor there, but it's not nothing either.
That's all I've got my eye on right now, at least until the latest round of spoilers is done - I'm hoping for
Culling the Weak,
Chain of Vapor, allied fetches and mana positive rocks, but we will see I guess. In the meantime, I thought it might be worth going over my thoughts on the LoTR cards. I actually think it's one of those sets we'll get months down the track on and think it was much better than first takes, and I think there's at least a couple of other considerations for Varina in the mix.
Flowering of the White Tree - There's at least a medium case for this. Creature boosts are nice, and this protects, to some degree, our commander from interaction, as well as a bit of insurance for
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge lines too. It's not a shoe in, but I think its defensible if you're wanting to stop interaction and don't want to use the stack.
Borne Upon a Wind - If we're in any way on a combo route, I actually think there's quite a strong case for this. All of the common lines we use are ones we need to wait for our turn to use, speaking specifically of mass reanimate lines and Haakon lines. Being creature based combo lines, in some ways, hurts in that respect. This card replaces itself in hand and gives us the opportunity to combo off at a moment's notice, in response to a board wipe, or in response to another win attempt. I think it's pretty good. Sure, we're lean on mana most games, but it could put in work.
Orcish Bowmasters - I think an optimised, fully loaded list probably does run this card. I don't know if you go down the wheels route, although it obviously fits well in that archetype, but it does a lot of what this list wants to do. We're drawing a ton, and we ideally want to survive combat, so we feed the bowmasters and they clear the way for us, as well as giving us a fatty to block with or sac for fodder. Personally, I'm not adding it in myself. If it were $30 cheaper I might consider it, but I'm fine with just staying on theme.
The One Ring - This card is very, very strong. I've seen a bit of gameplay in which it has warped games pretty well. The cast trigger is excellent, the draw very good, the burden counter/lifeloss scenario sequenced in the best way possible. That said I don't think we need it, and I think it interferes with our sequencing of playing out Varina. It definitely doesn't need untapper effects to do great things, but I think being at 4 makes it a no for me, and anything past early game I'd much prefer to be casting Varina anyway. So no from me, but I totally get it if it makes the cut for anyone else, card is busted.
The Black Gate - It's a bit of a corner case, but there's a case for this one. It gives us a way to get an attack trigger and not lose numbers. A lot of the time we don't care, but when we do we do, so I think it might be worth adding just for small fact.
Did I miss anything? I know I'm way late, but truthfully I wanted a little while to parse this set before writing up about it anyway. I knew we'd have no critters, but surprisingly I think there's a few things we can play around with here.