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Our daily coverage of Magic: TheGathering’s spoilers season for Modern Horizons continues today with Planebound Accomplice. This is a powerful and nostalgia-packed rare card making its debut in the set — and it has an awesome Planeswalker summoning ability.

Planebound Accomplice new Modern Horizons card with Planeswalker background

Homages

Planebound Accomplice, like many of the cards in Modern Horizons, is an homage to a past card.

[irp posts=”24195″ name=”MTG Modern Horizons Day 3 Roundup | All spoilers for May 21″]

Modern Horizons spoilers | Planebound Accomplice | Sneak Attack | Magic: The Gathering (MTG)

Sneak Attack debuted in 1998, in the powerful Urza’s Saga set. It was a 4-mana enchantment that, for one red mana, put a creature from your hand onto the battlefield and gave it haste. The creature died at the end of the turn, but when you were cheating out a 15-mana Eldrazi, that didn’t matter much. Sneak Attack became a centerpiece of  “Sneak and Show” decks, that used it, and the similar Show and Tell, to get powerful and expensive cards like Griselbrand and Emrakul onto the battlefield and win on the spot.

Planebound Accomplice’s twist on this effect is that it sneaks in Planeswalkers, not creatures. The game is full of powerful and expensive Walkers, such as Karn and Ugin, and the Accomplice gives a new way to access their effects.

Sneakily powerful

The ability only costs one red mana. So you can even use it to play Planeswalkers in a deck with no mana to cast them otherwise. A Jund deck usually has no white or blue cards, but with Accomplice, Jace, the Mind Sculptor can now come down every turn.

There are even ways to get around the sacrifice effect if you want to amass a strong army. Venser, the Sojourner is a Planeswalker that can exile a permanent you own and then have it return to the field at the end of the turn. This includes himself. You can cheat out Venser, then use his own ability to exile him for the turn. This avoids the sacrifice. Venser can then exile each other Planeswalker you cheat out after you use their effects. The end result is a field full of Planeswalkers.

Venser, the Sojourner
Venser’s ‘+2″ ability will let you keep walkers you cheat in on the field. Including himself.

Seeds of the future

Finally, the Planeswalker being summoned in the art is a new one. Head Vision Designer Mark Rosewater stated there is a new Planeswalker debuting in Modern Horizons. The figure matches the unknown character first teased in the Modern Horizons intro video two months back.

Planebound Accomplice summons Planeswalkers in Modern Horizons
The Planeswalker summoned in Accomplice’s art is a new one as seen in this poster.

This Three-Eyed Raven-looking tree-like walker is sure to be an impactful and interesting design. As always, we’ll be here to break it down when the card does finally debut, so stay tuned on our Magic: The Gathering page!

Missed the last few days of spoilers or looking for a quick way to catch up? Check out our Daily Rundown post for Day 3, where we track every spoiler revealed on each particular day!