Spoiler Highlight: Quintorius Kand on Standard & Pioneer

The preview season for Lost Caverns of Ixalan started a few days ago (24), and is already in full swing. Among the cards revealed in the official Wizards livestream is the newest Planeswalker, whose spark was released in March of the Machine - Quintorius Kand.

Being part of the now limited number of Planeswalkers, as many lost their spark in The Aftermath, Quintorius might be one of the cards with the greatest potential for presence in competitive formats so far - especially in Standard and Pioneer!

In this article, we break down the new card and evaluate how much it can impact the Metagame.

Quintorius is a very decent Planeswalker for its five mana cost. It carries two qualities that tend to standardize the viability of this card category in competitive formats: its positive ability creates tokens to protect it (and 3/2 is a considerable body when we are the beatdown), and its second ability combines card advantage with free spell, which guarantees more impactful effects, in addition to exercising players' deckbuilding creativity.

Its high point, however, is its passive ability: Quintorius Kand offers a Syphon Life for every time you play spells from the exile - a theme that has been explored in recent sets, and interacts with several cards present in Standard and Pioneer today: Showdown of the Skalds, Wrenn's Resolve, Questing Druid and other cards with the Adventure keyword.

Then comes his last ability: on the right shell with low costs, the Planeswalker can win the game the moment his ultimate is activated if he remains in play: casting several exiled cards with the extra mana provided by Quintorius can mean ten or more damage with his passive ability.

So what are the problems with it? The first is its cost: five mana is a lot for Pioneer, and five mana walkers have to make their effort worth it in Standard. Furthermore, the Discovery ability, where the player reveals cards from the top until they find a spell with a cost less than or equal to the pre-determined number and can cast it for free or put the card in its owner's hand, does not provide guarantees that you'll get the effect you want unless you make heavy deckbuilding concessions.

Quintorius Kand doesn't seem to fit the same mold as Teferi, Hero of Dominaria in the five-mana Planeswalkers category, but it has enough qualities to deserve its place in formats that can support it, not to mention the potential for interactions and combos that the new keyword enables.

Addendum on the Discovery keyword

According to the official rules posted in Wizards' article, the new ability means: Exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card with mana value 3 or less. Cast it without paying its mana cost or put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom in a random order.

According to them, unlike Cascade before the errata, or the trigger on Invasion of Alara, Discovery cannot cast spells with a mana value greater than indicated, even if the card revealed matches the value - That is, the player cannot cheat on costs with the ability, such as, for example, casting Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor from a Valki, God of Lies, or a Fetch Quest coming from Bramble Familiar.

Naya Pia was a deck that produced results in the first weeks of Standard post-Wilds of Eldraine, but was unable to maintain its performance in the Metagame due to its unfocused game plan, which simulates too many Aggro and Midrange stances in the same list.

With Quintorius Kand, the late-game of this archetype, which we can rename to Naya Exile, improves and even gains more consistency in payoffs for playing cards from exile. Questing Druid, Nahiri's Warcrafting, and Redcap Gutter-Dweller already do a good job of establishing a decent number of cards to exile alongside Wrenn's Resolve, Reckless Impulse and some Adventure spells, such as Heartflame Duelist and Virtue of Loyalty, can easily fit to make the list more consistent.

The new Planeswalker also has the potential to appear in Mardu variants of the current Standard's decks. Since its passive ability doesn't specify the exile the card must have come from, abilities from cards like Decadent Dragon and Etali, Primal Conqueror work to trigger it, while its ability to fill the board with 3/2 Spirits is an excellent reward if the player can keep it clean for enough turns.

Other options, like Goodstuff lists, seem viable for inclusion. But, today, Four-Color Ramp doesn't run red, and Invasion of Alara decks, which could run it since it is within the costs that the archetype entails, don't seem to benefit enough from Quintorius to justify its inclusion.

The first option that every Pioneer player will think of for the new Planeswalker is in a list that already benefits from playing exiled cards, Boros Pia.

Quintorius may even deserve one or two slots in the maindeck as a curve-topper to interact with the deck's other exile effects, in addition to establishing good pressure. However, he doesn't collaborate with Boros Pia's more aggressive proposal of trying to play under, as it does with Showdown of the Skalds. Furthermore, his second ability is almost null due to the lack of control we have from what can come from it.

Therefore, he perhaps deserves a little more space on the Sideboard for attrition matchups. However, for these games, Boros Pia already has Reidane, God of the Worthy and Invasion of Gobakhan, both cards that cost less and have more flexibility in their use.

Another option for Quintorius is a place where any card - or most of them - revealed with the Discovery ability is impactful. Goodstuff archetypes, such as 5 Color Omnath, or Niv-to-Light are a good start, and can be played with fewer copies of Planeswalker, with even one to search with another card in appropriate situations.

But Quintorius doesn't add anything to what these decks propose today. It doesn't offer any flexibility, and to be a Bring to Light target, it's better to have other options which can do a bit more on each occasion.

Quintorius then ends up at the mercy of what Lost Caverns of Ixalan still has to offer, or interactions that have not yet been properly explored. One of them is the combination of the Planeswalker with Geological Appraiser and Release to the Wind, highlighted by some Twitter accounts as a potential combo, capable of dealing up to 18 damage with its trigger if it works in a build that allows you to specifically find these cards with Discovery.

Quintorius Kand has inherent qualities that give him the potential to see play in Standard, and even to establish and/or create new archetypes in the format. For Pioneer, however, it still depends on players' creativity to find the best ways to break its abilities, as it doesn't interact as well with the strategies it could fit into.

As the preview season is just beginning, it's too early to say whether it will be a staple, or just another good card without much space in the Metagame. Lost Caverns of Ixalan can also bring many interactions and other interesting cards, capable of changing the competitive environment.

Thanks for reading!