Card cycle issues
Generally, cards that only have one use, such as activation of a set specific keyword, are unplayable. For this reason, I do not think the brand of… cycle is necessary and could be replaced with a set of similarly costed enchantments. For evidence of this, see cards like false memories. Instead of putting additional faith helpers into your set, just put more colored noncreature permanents that interact with each other in.

	I disagree with creating a cycle of 5/5s for 5-monocolored mana, since green and black are the only colors that can really get away with playing monocolored mana costs. Also, the ramp effect on each is utterly insane and should be cut in all colors that don’t get mana ramp.

	For a similar reason, the Energy mages are just far too powerful. Giving colors that don’t receive mana ramp a powerful mana producing ability is just too much. The limited use doesn’t matter when they are just used to accelerate out power cards a turn early. A theoretical mono-white curve as follows. Turn two Yaltheri energy mage, turn three infinity brightness, turn four, Iona, Elesh norn, etc. Even just the Energy Mages by themselves, a turn four titan in a monocolored deck is ridiculous.

	Maps of whatever should be costed one less. Three mana for a sometimes on, sometimes off pump is not particularly good with cards like Glorious anthem.

	Cycle of Gates seems redundant, and none are particularly efficient at what they do. Suggest removing the tap clause and increasing the overall mana cost to 3.

Individual Card issues
·	Amaran Willpower mage could be changed to: “spells can’t be cast during combat phases.”
·	Amara’s Chronicler seems very off color. Seeing your opponent’s hand is specifically blue or black and white has little use for the ability.
·	Angel of Yaltheri would be better as a 3/2, considering how potent a 4/2 flying vigilance would be in limited.
·	Cadet of Yaltheri is woefully underpowered.
·	Dandral, King of Yaltheri
o	Sorcery speed pro color of choice sucks.
o	Should probably give an emblem for the ultimate.
o	Five is steep for a planeswalker that doesn’t really do anything but support creatures. Suggest you cost it less, reduce its loyalty, and maybe change one of the abilities into something that makes a token or at least lets you heal a little.
·	Kisara, the Highest Angel is a ridiculously cheap version of Iona. I suggest a complete rework of the card.
·	Priestess of Amara… And when was the last time players would pay mana to prevent damage?
·	Quillspark mage would be better as a 1W activation.
·	Quillspark Virus. Lifegain untargetable oblivion ring for W more. Considering how good oblivion ring is already.
·	Recharge is even more underpowered than cadet of Yaltheri. Recharge simply doesn’t do enough for 5 mana.
·	Sleeplessness just seems weird at common. I know that six is probably more than what would usually be paid for an effect, but untapping everything doesn’t feel anywhere near a common, or for that matter, a white, ability.
·	Sunflash would be better as target attacking creature (I’m thinking of exile, the card, not the ability.)
·	Yaltheri Soldier is outclassed by any of the two cost knights. An additional ability would be nice.
·	Apprentice of Wirala is extremely underpowered. Looking forwards, that seems to carry on for all your levelers.
·	Bloated whale is pretty darn good for a two drop. Perhaps you should lower its toughness by one.
·	Conversion is essentially prismatic lace, which was never terribly good.
·	Coral Entrapment is off color and essentially superior to pacifism, and for that matter is superior to quite a few enchantments with pacifism effects. Recommend nerf.
·	Wording on A Failure to Count should probably be “Counter target spell with CMC X and exile it. You may pay X, where X is the converted mana cost of that spell, and cast it.”
·	Jaxa, Lady of Dreams is terrible. Paying four mana for a card that essentially only functions as a blocker and doesn’t scry particularly well, while being legendary, isn’t very good. Also, the “can block anything” clause is very difficult to put to wording, while not being particularly good.
·	Lexaria, Mistress of Wirala
o	Looting on a four cost is just terrible. Even as a + ability, it hardly does anything anyway.
o	Scry X and losing loyalty counters is somehow even worse than overcosted looting
o	Doesn’t really do anything powerful at all. Planeswalkers have to be able to interact with your opponent in some way, or at the very least do something interesting.
·	Mirage Being is worse than bloated whale, with a nearly identical ability. Suggest you remove it entirely.
·	Oceanic wall could probably just be costed 2UU and put a 0/4 into play, without having to deal with faith. As it is, it doesn’t seem very playable in anything but monoblue, where there are better options anyway.
·	Subliminal Virus is way too expensive for a draw one, chance of sleep or explore. It would be better as an instant and costed less.
·	Swept away is very strong. If your opponent doesn’t have cards in their hand, it becomes destroy target creature. Even if they do, you still two for one your opponent. It should cost at least four.
·	Wiralan Faerie is probably too good. A 1/3 shroud, flying for UU is right on curve. Giving it a tap effect is just unnecessary and off color.
·	Wiralan Leviathan should probably have more toughness, power, or some sort of shroud ability. Flavorwise, leviathans are huge creatures that are extremely difficult to kill. A 7/4 just doesn’t make too much sense, especially for 5UUU.
·	Wiralan Merpeople. It’s merfolk, no? Also, giving blue a ridiculous amount of easy blockers to prevent your opponent from doing anything seems rather redundant. Giving them a practical curve in terms of blockers, while being hilarious, utterly kills aggro.
·	Wiralan Seer can just be Scry 3, draw 1. it has extremely similar functionality.
·	Wiralan Sky Predator. It seems odd that you would give blue a flying 2/3 for 3 and white a flying lifelink 2/3 for 3. Blue tends to have more flying than white, but an automatically superior card just doesn’t seem right. Skylight paladin should probably be costed more.
·	You just made Beserkoid because you wanted to abuse gravecrawler, right?
·	A Dark Bargain is variably really good and mediocre. In madness or reanimator decks, it becomes stupid as those decks are full of effects that allow discarding the entire hand. Otherwise, it makes it so that no one can play discard unless they actually want cards in their hand in their graveyard, since all discard automatically becomes card disadvantage.
·	Degradation is unplayable except in the previously mentioned madness or reanimator decks. Discarding two so your opponent will discard one is hardly good.
·	Denaturing virus is hardly good. For that matter, a few of the virus cards are barely playable due to the huge factor of randomness involved in their use. Paying four mana for a card that may not do anything at all is bad.
·	Disciple of Jarthak is underpowered.
·	Galthor, Overlord of Jarthak
o	Deathtouch is okay, but its rather underwhelming. Deathtouch and a stat boost of some sort would be better
o	The mind rot effect is excellent. For one mana more, I get a mind rot attached to a planeswalker that happens again next turn. For that reason alone, this card is powerful
o	Ultimate has potentially hilarious results. I find it unusual that it requires less loyalty than some of the other planeswalker ultimates, though it is far more powerful right off the bat.
·	Galthor’s Desecrated Origin could use some sort of disadvantage. Black usually doesn’t get card draw without disadvantages anyway.
·	Hands of death is largely inferior to Jarthak Bloodthief, aside from the faith trigger, which is mostly irrelevant. A more splashable mana cost of 2B would help it a little.
·	Infernal Mammoth, or for that matter, any common, should have a monocolored mana cost. Monocolored mana costs should be reserved exclusively for powerful cards with extremely colorspecific effects. Not just intimidate. Cost this at 3B.
·	Jarthak battlemaiden could be reworded as a traditional lord, only place +1/+1 counters on vampires, and be costed B less.
·	Jarthak commoner makes no sense at all flavorwise, or mechanic wise. Black doesn’t get toughness increasing abilities unless they also increase power.
·	Jarthak Zombie Shaper. Six power for four? Is this a typo or something, because also activating on death is just stupid on a creature that’s already well above the curve. Rough equivalent would be a sprouting thrinax that gives you six saprolings on death instead of just three.
·	Lerovaz zombie. There is no justification for this to make you sac a creature, or to produce mana. Putting a creature from your graveyard on top of your library is bad. This card just doesn’t make sense.
·	Patron of Death. As if Black didn’t already have enough sacrifice effects in this set.
·	Rebirth of Jarthak has to have some justification of having an additional cost on top of already costing five mana. Five mana for reanimation with no strings attached is already acceptable. Making this cost an 3BB, and giving it an extra cost just makes it terrible. A more competitive cost for such a card would be 1B, or for that matter, a straight reprint of rise from the grave.
·	Recall the Shadow is bad. Triple black cost makes it restrictive to play, and black doesn’t have many targets to return that aren’t already covered by disentomb.
·	Release of the Damned could allow the creatures to keep their abilities.
·	Siervan Zombie doesn’t do too much. A 1/1 with an ability that almost never activates is bad.
·	Splitter zombies is hilarious, and for some odd reason, also a squadron hawk that autocasts itself. Power concerns maybe?
·	Targis, pet of Galtor. Again, shielding is not a black ability. Different keywords, such as first strike or lifelink would be better on this card than shielding. A 4/2, first strike, lifelink, deathtouch, with an optional return to hand clause when it dies seems perfectly acceptable, especially when legendary. It could also cost less, probably 2BB. Since legendary creatures are generally mythic, its power could be increased even more in exchange for a rarity increase.
·	Unwelcome. Why not just reprint doom blade?
·	Zeta Slash. As apprehensive as I am about Black permanent destruction, it would have to be adequately playtested before I could make any conclusions.
·	Zetarran Demon. Why the heck would this card be any good? Besides saccing my animated of galtor to get a Jarthak zombie shaper that I get to keep, it seems very specific in terms of use.
·	Birthling of Marago. Underpowered like the other levelers. Reason for this is that a 1/1 for 3 mana is terrible, and the increases are hardly enough to justify the mana cost. Still, this one is better than the others.
·	Callista, Empress of Marago. Not as much to say about this than the other planeswalkers. I’d say it’s decently powerful, as repeatable creature burn for 5 mana is great. Second ability might be a bit too strong though.
·	Goblin Predator is strange. Mana production in red is generally strange.
·	Goblin Raiding Party. I thought we got over the “doesn’t untap” during your next turn thing quite a few years ago. You may as well reprint goblin piker, for all the functionality that you’re going to get out of this card.
·	Goblin Saboteur should be artifacts only. Stop trying to give red enchantment destruction.
·	Lavarock virus is actually really good. Giving red an outright destroy effect might be a bit much, and the extra damage just seems over the top. Could easily cost 3RR.
·	Marago Warrior has a very restrictive cost, and a mediocre ability. For three mono-red mana ball lightning does 3 times the damage and war elemental does other things on top of that.
·	Magaronic Eruption. Adressing the issue of outright creature kill in red. Red doesn’t kill creatures, it damages them. Red also can’t deal with enchantments because enchantments usually aren’t tangible things, but merely magical effects that stay on the field until they’re dispelled. And the clause of nonred artifact is frankly ridiculous, given there are something like three or four red artifacts in the game. (I’m sure you were also referring to red creatures and enchantments, but the wording is just confusing.)
·	Rikan, Boss Goblin. Predation doesn’t seem all that red as an ability. Other than that, Rikan isn’t a particularly flavorful legend. He doesn’t do enough to justify legendary status, and isn’t particularly good in general, as he will die to any 2 power creature, and would be complete shit against any creature with shielding and a toughness of at least 3
·	Spark of Passion is a really bad reckless charge. If you want this effect, reprint reckless charge.
·	Superior dragonblast. Given my seal of approval for possible ridiculous combo potential
·	Terebkana Mage has a very white or green ability. Suggest moving to one of those colors
·	Trial by fire has confusing wording as is, and the lifeloss for card draw seems much more black than red.
·	Young Carpalin Dragon is underpowered. Suggest to reduce pump cost.
·	Designer Virus could probably just read “Reveal a card in your hand. Creatures you control get +X/+X until the end of turn, where X is that card’s CMC” with no other effects. Without trample, it isn’t particularly good. With trample, overwhelming stampede is usually just better anyway. There is no need to sacrifice the creatures afterwards.
·	Eralia, Queen of Varthos
o	5 mana seems like a lot to pay for a card that only pumps your creatures or gives you an inferior version of Garruk Wildspeaker’s +1.
o	+2/+2 doesn’t really do anything at all. Without creatures, Eralia is useless, and with creatures, Eralia gives a tiny stat boost, or helps casting spells, but only for creatures.
o	Generally inferior to every Garruk variant I can think of. Needs some sort of token making effect to be more effective.
o	Super Overrun seems to occur at a really low loyalty. +2 could be changed to +1.
·	Eralia’s personal Vassal. Lifegain or loyalty counters. Seems fairly weak, considering proliferate is a much more varied version of the first effect, and 1 life every turn is essentially nothing against any aggro decks.
·	Mad Beast of Varthos may as well be a vanilla 4/4 for 4. Since predation only applies when the creature in question actually does combat damage, it doesn’t really do too much.
·	Predation rampant could be costed less. From an outside perspective, predation doesn’t really do too much. Green has better ways of generating mana. Red doesn’t get much mana ramp in the first place, and having that extra mana is only useful if you can get it sufficiently early to actually need it. Late game, predation is useless.
·	Predator Leviathan. Half way down this card, I read the creature types and I laughed continuously for 3 minutes straight. Then I read the effect. Green should not get better reanimation than black, under any circumstances. As for changes, this card just needs to be black, and probably costed more.
·	Ranger of W/E varthos. Hard to judge. Ranger of Eastern Varthos is almost automatically superior to ranger of western varthos, as a looting effect is far stronger than a mere cantrip. Southern varthos also seems better than northern varthos due to elves essentially always having another elf on the field, and honestly, who would want to lead the game with artifact or enchantment destruction.
·	Student of Varthos. Underpowered, which has been stated for the other levelers. This one is just far inferior to Joraga treespeaker.
·	Varthos Crashmaster could be a rare. GW tokens wants this card to stomp everyone.
·	Varthos elephant is uncommon, unless for some reason you need a 5/4 common in limited. Even then, you could just reprint leatherback baloth.
·	Varthos tiger should cost 2G, because a 3/1 for GG is already good enough if you’re going to pass a 5/4 for GGG.
·	Yamana, Princess of the Heart. Needs more in set fatties for Predation to ramp into. Faith could justify giving it some other abilities on top of the +3/+3 as a 2/4 is not too strong to start with. This creature also blocks as a 4/8, just to bring into consideration. The usual problem with legendary non-utility creatures, but otherwise okay.
·	Guardians. Overall, they are fairly balanced, so I’ll just be saying what I think of them. If any serious issues come up, they will be addressed on the card itself.
·	Guardian of Thought. Arbiter EDH lol. I’ll just be over here, chipping you with my 1/7 that can block essentially all non-emrakul creatures. Giving other creatures shielding makes for hilarious troll.
·	Guardian of the Sinking Deep. Somehow even better at blocking than Guardian of Thought, though it won’t chip at your opponent’s health. A 2/10 deathtouch that gives all your other creatures double toughness and deathtouch would be hellishly difficult to attack into.
·	Guardian of Infernity. Excellent overall. Very succeptible to burn otherwise. If it stays on the field, there aren’t many creatures that can kill it, and it makes your other creatures hard to kill.
·	Guardian of Thorudin Hills. OM NOM NOM.
·	Guardian of Living Things. Nicely balanced. Rather low toughness, which is unfortunate. Could use a small buff.
·	Guardian of Polarity. It sits there, behind your creatures, making them all annoying.
·	Guardian of the Crescent Magma. Inexplicably weak, compared to the other guardians. Change of keywords may be needed.
·	Guardian of Fate turns every creature you control into hilarious supertramplers. I like.
·	Guardian of the Shining Sky. The keywords on this seem to correspond more to the colors than any of the other guardians. Pretty darn good at that.
·	Guardian of the Kepland. Not entirely sure why you would need both shielding and trample, as one is an entirely offensive ability and the other is a entirely defensive ability. Still nice, due to the ability to give the keywords to other creatures, but different, more color corresponding keywords would be nice.
·	Ancient bow can be lowered to uncommon rarity.
·	Bow of the mighty doesn’t feel like equipment at all. It could probably give a better stat bonus for its cost, since repeatable artifact-enchant destruction doesn’t do anything against creature-based aggro, making it a more expensive ancient bow. Also, rarity could easily be lowered to rare.
·	Crusader’s Engine. Please kill this card dead. Wurmcoil engine was bad enough.
·	Junk Collector doesn’t appear to do much, and considering the relatively small amount of cards that actually have faith, it isn’t particularly useful.
·	Power cell generator has an extremely prohibitive cost, and its end effect isn’t particularly useful anyway. Suggest decrease in cost or an effect similar to gavony township.
·	Preyspark Bomb is not going to be useful until predation becomes an omnipresent factor, and due to the lack of cards for predation to ramp into, at the moment it isn’t dangerous enough to deserve a dedicated sideboard card.
·	Degraded terrain seems to be too good for a colorless land. Repeatable 1 damage or really cheap repeatable mill on a card that’s difficult to destroy is insane.
·	Legendary lands that make tokens. Not recommended, since the ability to swarm the field with nothing but land is very potent, especially if there’s no possibility to lose the land itself. Would be extremely difficult to play against. A better option would simply have the land animate and turn into creatures.
Additional cards not noted on this list have no apparent defects.