Last night, bleary eyed in my hotel room after a long day of work, I checked Twitter and was quickly reminded of the MTG Arena preview. I quickly cracked out the popcorn for a sneak peek into the future of online Magic, and boy did they show off a few toys.

Long after the excitement for Magic’s new platform had come and passed, the fire to brew with Growing Rites of Itlimoc burned bright. The ceiling of this card is an upgraded Gaea’s Cradle, the driving force behind one of Legacy’s all-time greatest decks, so it’s worth a second glance.

Taking it from the top, the front half of this card doesn’t reach the bar to see play in Standard, let alone the older formats. For three mana, you’d expect to be up a card, and even Divinations often times need a leg-up to see play in Standard. The selection is reminiscent of Oath of Nissa, which was cheap enough to see four-of levels of play even in decks which didn’t get any value out of the second line of text, so we have to get paid back for the two mana difference to justify it.

There’s a couple of different avenues to pursue here to turn the enchantment over, primarily in tandem with mana dorks or otherwise tokens. The power of mana dorks has taken a step back as of the last four years, starting at two mana with cards like Druid of the Cowl. Assuming we skip turn one, we’re looking at around turn four to play and transform the Rites, giving us a payoff on turn five. At this point, however, if we have four dorks in play when we untap on turn five, we already have nine mana available without Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun. With Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger bidding us farewell with the upcoming rotation, we’re unlikely to be getting paid off nearly hard enough for the amount of work we’re doing and the number of cards expended.

Tokens are a much more exciting prospect. If we go off the deep end, it’s possible to flip Rites on turn three when powered out by cards like Servo Exhibition and Ornithopter. (Side note – I do love the synergy of being able to jam Rites on three with three other creatures in play, and grab an Ornithopter when required for a quick flip!). At this point, we’re really doing it – untapping with access to a full eight mana on turn four is an enormous swing, and lets us power out payoffs like Walking Ballista – all of which plays well with Inspiring Statuary as a backup plan to cheat on mana in another direction. From here, closing the game out is just a matter of picking how you want to win – I can see anything from Approach of the Second Sun (which we can dig closer to with the spare copies of Rites), Torment of Hailfire to convert your mana into a devastating card swing, or a midrangey approach using Paradoxical Outcome, Reverse Engineer or even Overflowing Insight to refill the grip – not to forget all the enormous dinosaurs spoiled so far.

Over in Modern, one deck comes to mind immediately – the long-suffering Elves, who have long been deprived the mana dumptruck of Gaea’s cradle. This time around, we’re looking at an even faster transformation – an Elvish Mystic on one allows you to power out Dwynen’s Elite or a pair of one-costs, and alongside a Heritage Druid you can drop the legendary enchantment with four creatures as early as turn two. On the untap, we have enough mana that we can very quickly set up a kill with a double Ezuri, Renegade Leader activation, or even more exciting we can now lean into the legacy plan of Craterhoof Behemoth. With this kind of setup, we’ve lowered our creature count, and so we’re now worse off for Collected Company; the deck is now looking to be more heavily combo centric and trim on the midrange elements. Rites itself also helps to dig for your win conditions – specifically helping to set up an early Elvish Archdruid gives you a lot of redundancy of your most powerful effects. While I don’t necessarily expect this to become the norm, this package is an option to give the deck a new, faster angle of attack, whenever the format reverts back to its prior state of ships passing in the night – each player competing to set up a turn-three kill before the other.

Even as early as we are into the Ixalan spoiler season, I’ve already got decklists penned out on every scrap of paper in arm’s reach – I’m loving the design, world-building and the vast possibilities, both with the slew of new cards and the exit of four sets which have all-too-long dominated the format (smell ya’ later, Gideon!). What’s your take on this brave new world so far?