This is the second installment of my series reviewing the cards of Judgment for the purposes of Limited play. You can find the first instalment here.

Blue

It's never bad to be the blue mage, is it? I mean, every other color seems to have their sets where their cards are just worse than their counterparts, but not blue. Blue always seems strong.

Blue's constant strength can be traced to two primary areas: card advantage and evasion. The best flyers have always been blue, as have the best card drawers, and when you throw in the extraordinary capacity for filling the graveyard, blue remains strong even though Torment is the black set and Judgment the white-green equivalent.

Judgment's blue expands the template's horizons in that its variation of the nightmare mechanic has produced massive creatures for their costs that should really help both blue-green and blue-white decks while blue-black may be able to survive thanks to the more control-oriented approach those creatures will allow it. Throw in the usual rare bombs and a couple of potentially game-breaking cantrip-counters and you have a color that can provide your deck's base or support for another.

The Cards

Spelljack
I was fortunate enough to open Spelljack at the Prerelease here in London and proceeded to hear more misinterpretations of what this thing does than any card I can remember. Very simply, it counters a spell, removing it from the game, and allows you to cast that spell any time you want without paying the mana. Through the day, I Spelljacked Chainflinger, Chastise, Kamahl, Wormfang Drake and Prismatic Strands, and brought it back to my hand more than once with Scrivener. If you get the mana to cast it, Spelljack is going to win the game more often than not. If you open it and pick it in Booster Draft, do not let ANYONE see it. If people know it's out there, they'll play around it, and you can't afford to leave six mana available forever. This may be the most powerful card in the set.

Wonder  
The biggest problem I have with 2/2 flyers is that they die too easily to be reliable, but Wonder is the exception to the rule. The last thing your opponent should want is to see it die. One or two flyers are usually annoying enough, so when your opponents see they might have to defend from four, five or more, they're going to do everything in their power to see that it doesn't happen. Unfortunately for them, more often than not, there's not going to be too much they can do about it. Remember: discarding it as an instant will give all of your creatures flight. Could be a good combat trick.

Scalpelexis
If your opponent isn't playing black, how do they get rid of a five-toughness flyer? More often than not they don't, and Scalpelexis can make them pay by the bushel load. It's ability has been compared to that of Grindstone, but the artifact isn't close, with this monster milling at least four, often eight and occasionally twelve or sixteen cards and removing them from the game in the environment where getting them to the graveyard would make things ok. When you're playing a forty-card deck, numbers like eight and twelve really are frightening. Throw in the ability to block just about any flyer in the environment and survive and you have a very strong card. The lower power may get this to you third or fourth for the next month or so, but come July, everyone will know how strong it really is.

Wormfang Crab  
Okay, first things first, the Crab has been errataed so that it can't be the permanent your opponent chooses to phase out. Now that there are no one card infinite loops here, all we're left with is one heck of a creature. Yes, the Crab will sacrifice your next most important permanent, but it's unblockable and has a toughness of six, making it very difficult to stop. Best played on turn four as your first creature, so your opponent has to remove a land, the Crab is a huge threat to your opponent's life total at any time.

Wormfang Drake
Three mana for a 3/4 flyer... that pretty much says it all. Yes, there's a substantial drawback, but you can actually make that work to your advantage, phasing out creatures with coming into play abilities or detrimental enchantments on them. There will occasionally be times you can't cast it, but the same held true for Cavern Harpy and Silver Drake, and they were pretty good in Limited if I recall correctly. Simply, a 3/4 flyer is an immediate threat your opponent must deal with, with failure to do so causing irreparable damage. Don't worry about the lost creature: You'll get it back soon enough.

Aven Fogbringer
I'm a big fan of this card, though its strength will rely in part on the type of deck you play it in. In a control-based blue-white deck whose mission statement is 'gum up the ground, then kill through the air', the Fogbringer is little more than a Dusk Imp, with the returning land buying you a little time. If you're playing a green-blue tempo deck, the returning of the land is a very big deal on turn four. Throw in the fact that this guy acts as protection from those hard-to-deal-with Enchant Lands, and you have a very solid card that you'll want in every deck.

Wormfang Behemoth  
It's not too often that the blue mage gets to cast 5/5 creatures. The Behemoth brings with it a nasty drawback, but it's one that can definitely be played around as long as you leave it in your hand until you've used everything else of substance. Once in play, the Behemoth provides a very tangible, problematic threat that your opponent will have to deal with quickly, so if you do have a few castable but not immediately useful cards in hand, don't be afraid to feed them to the Behemoth: pretty soon, you'll have them back, because either the beast will be dead or your opponent will.

Lost in Thought
Blue's answer to Kirtar's Desire, Lost in Thought can go one better by suppressing creature abilities as well, giving blue mages a way of coping with Cabal Torturer, Chainflinger and the like. The drawback is that your opponent can revive the enchanted creature by removing three cards from their graveyard, but as you'll soon find out, three cards is a lot in a format full of cards that empty the yard, especially considering threshold and flashback cards. A very solid card.

Keep Watch  
Thus far, this has been the toughest card for me to evaluate, but my hunch says that it's pretty good. Best in blue-green, where you'll be able to summon large numbers of creatures (think Acorn Harvest) and strong too in blue-white, where you'll have some control of the table, more often than not, Keep Watch will draw you two cards for the one, in exchange for your committing your resources in a way that doesn't interact with the field of play. If you have a couple of Harvests or even better, Battle Screeches, you're going to do a lot of winning when you resolve this card.

Mirror Wall
This thing is HUGE! Suddenly, blue is the color of fat, with this 3/4 for four larger than most green four casting cost creatures. Its ranking assumes that you have the white mana you need to activate it's ability to attack, but blue usually wins through the air anyway, so the opportunity to put a 3/4 body into play to gum up the ground is one that shouldn't go unnoticed.

Wormfang Turtle  
Where the like-minded Wormfang Newt isn't quite up to snuff, the Turtle really seems worth the drawback to me. Four is a lot of toughness for aggressive decks to hack through, and at three mana, it's fast enough to make a difference in those matchups where aggression can overrun you. Yes, it slows your mana development a turn, but the defense the Turtle provides makes it more than worthwhile.

Flash of Insight
Library manipulation is a rare commodity in Limited, where the ability to find your bombs is paramount, so you'd better know a good thing when you see it. Unlike Impulse, the card it will be unfairly compared to, Flash of Insight won't serve as an early game mana fix, instead functioning almost solely as a midgame game-breaker. With so much graveyard manipulation in the format, the flashback ability is going to be very difficult to abuse, but the initial ability is enough.

Grip of Amnesia
I'm not usually a big fan of cards that offer your opponents an option, but when the phrase "draw a card" appears at the end of their text, it makes things a lot better. Grip of Amnesia is a solid card because, even when they have no cards in their graveyard, you can cast it just to draw a card and get one into the graveyard. When they do have cards in the 'yard, especially cards with flashback or the Incarnations, the cost of resolving their spell may become too high, and that means the Grip counters a spell, draws you a card and does so as a sixth or seventh pick. That seems pretty good to me.

Quiet Speculation  
Obviously, the strength of this card will rely on the number of castable flashback cards your deck contains, but there is a lot of flashback in this set, so it should be pretty easy to optimize. If you have a lot of flashback, don't be afraid to draft this higher than it's ranked here: three for one is usually a good deal.

Cephalid Inkshrouder  
The Inkshrouder has a lot going for it. You can make it untargetable. You can make it unblockable. It gives you an outlet for madness and for threshold. But with that said, the 'Shrouder is still highly susceptible to the many cards in the environment that can repeatedly do a point of damage or give -1/-1 to creatures. Take these two extremes and roll them up and you have a mediocre card that will usually be good enough for your deck, but you can only have so many 2/1s for three.

Telekinetic Bonds
It's possible I've ranked this too low because it packs quite a punch, but with a high and hard casting cost and the substantial activation cost, Telekinetic Bonds is hard enough to use that I rank it as a card that can win games, but only in very circumstantial situations, and which is otherwise too hard to utilize to see play. If you're heavy blue and have a lot of beneficial discard effects though, you can play with Bonds and it will definitely win you the occasional game.

Mist of Stagnation  
Surprised to see this here? Mist of Stagnation is a very difficult card to manage, but there will be some decks out there that just optimize it very well. I liken this card most to Cowardice in that it's a five mana blue enchantment that the environment nurtures well and which can single-handedly win the game. If you have Looters and/or other cards that fill your graveyard and at the same time have the Advocates needed to drain your opponent's graveyard of cards, this is the lock, and more often than not, there won't be much your opponent will be able to do about it.

Mental Note
Of all the one mana cantrips that have been released over the last couple of years, this may be the best. Mental Note has the same graveyard-filling strength as Careful Study without the loss of a card, and now, more than ever, that ability is crucial. If your deck has threshold cards, flashback cards or both in abundance, be sure to get yourself one or two of these. Oh, and for those of you who worry about milling your best card, in a deck of 25-30 cards, the odds of your drawing them aren't good, and as long as they haven't gotten to your hand, you haven't 'lost' them: You can't lose what you never had.

Laquatus's Disdain  
The biggest problem control players have with countering flashback cards is the card disadvantage they get as a result, but Laquatus's Disdain takes care of that in that it functions as both counter and cantrip. The problem though is that not everyone will have flashback cards, and those that do may not draw them or cast them while you have the Disdain in hand. In other words, playing this card can be risky, but if you have cards in your deck that need you to discard anyways, it can warrant a main deck slot. If nothing else, it's a strong sideboard option.

Envelop
This card is a study in extremes. On the good side, the casting cost is amazing, the power absolute and you're bound to find one in eight boosters of Judgment. The bad, though, is the simple fact that not everyone will have sorceries in their decks, leaving you with a wasted card, and quite often, when they do have them, they'll have flashback, meaning Envelop won't do the whole job. A great sideboard card against Overrun, Shower of Coals, Kirtar's Wrath and a number of other bombs, that unfortunately is all it will be more often than not.

Hapless Researcher
While not offering a whole lot in the way of substantial presence once in play, the researcher is a slightly playable card for a few reasons: 1) It fills out your mana curve. 2) It gets two cards into your graveyard. 3) It offers you the hope of trading with a higher-cost one-toughness creature. 4) It offers you a madness outlet, and 5) it allows you to trade a useless card for a random one. That is a lot of positive on such a seemingly insignificant card, and while all of it added up doesn't ensure the Researcher a place in your blue decks, it does mean that he warrants consideration.

Wormfang Newt  
2/2 blue creatures for two are few and far between, and they provide a valuable commodity, but the cost of this one is too high to play it early on. The whole point of blue decks having quick generic creatures is to slow down opposing aggression until blue's control elements take over, but the Newt slows you down when you're trying to get to the midgame as fast as possible. It's playable, but you probably don't want it to be if you can help it.

Web of Inertia  
This card is hard to make useful and once it is, your opponent will still be able to get cards in the yard to sacrifice, so I don't see it getting much play. There could be decks that concentrate on depleting opposing graveyards in which this could be effective though.

Defy Gravity
The first Judgment card I ever sideboarded in, Defy Gravity provides a solid trick for a reasonable price that can help you deal with decks with more flyers than you can otherwise handle. In addition, Defy Gravity may find itself a place in those blue-green decks that were unable to find themselves a Ghostly Wings. You'll want it in the sideboard more often than not, but it'll serve you pretty well when called upon, especially in those decks that need to discard cards.

Cephalid Constable
There's a lot of power here. The Constable is easy to kill and pretty expensive, but if you can find some way to make it survive and evade, you're going to win the game. To exploit the Constable's power, there are two things you can do: draft a lot of blue's bounce cards to clear its path and compliment its ability, and draft creature enhancement cards that will make its ability lethal. How good is double Sylvan Mighting the Constable when your opponent blocks it with a 2/1? How good is enchanting this guy with Unquestioned Authority? I'm not saying it will always be playable, it's far from it actually, but if your deck is capable of exploiting it, the Constable could win you some games.

Wormfang Manta  
Am I missing something here? Extra turns are a valuable commodity, but sacrificing a turn seems to cancel the bonus out. That means that remaining attributes of this card, at seven mana, pretty much have to blow you away, but while six power flyers are a nice commodity, one toughness for seven mana is ludicrous. While some would point out your opponent won't want it to die because of the extra turn, the seven mana and turn you already paid don't come close to being compensated for. I can't see a reason you'd ever want to play it, assuming you're interested in winning.

Cunning Wish  
It's very rare that you'll want to use this, but there are situations where it will be possible. The key to making the Wishes work is having lots of sac lands, so you don't have to splash the off color cards you drafted. Playing blue-white and facing down Painbringer? Go get that Thermal Blast in your sideboard. Sadly though, that likely isn't reason enough to main deck this card, so you'll probably want to have a few high caliber color-hate cards in there too.