Card Review 8-8-2025

Welcome back to Card Review Friday! Today, I’m reviewing one of my favorite pieces from the Counter Intelligence precon: Gavel of the Righteous.

I slept on this card for a long time. But I’ve been trying something new with the Counter Intelligence precon: I can only swap out a card for each win I get with it. I hope that, with this approach, I can force myself to learn the deck before changing it. I don’t think that a win is necessarily proof that a deck is finished or even in good condition. Playing standard has taught me that sometimes you win because the conditions are right, or because they’re just wrong enough for other players. No matter how you look at it, a win is not a guarantor of a good deck. But what a win does guarantee is that you know how to play the deck amidst the varying conditions of a game of MTG.

What does this have to do with the gavel? As I’ve been reviewing the deck, I’ve been trying to identify some of the better cards in the deck. I’ll be sharing those in upcoming card reviews, and I wanted GotR to be the first. I like how this card plays into the proliferate subtheme with Kilo, as tapping it proliferates the charge counter it gets at the beginning of combat. This helps you speed up to the four counters needed for double strike, but it also helps you pass the equipment from your tapped attacker to your blockers, who could use it to keep you safe at the mere cost of a single counter.

I’ve also noticed that it doesn’t track charge counters for the sake of granting double strike. This means that, in artifact decks that care about passing counters from one permanent to the other, Gavel of the Righteous can serve as a potential counter bank that grants double strike to reward this behavior.

Thanks for reading this, and stay righteous in your games! The next Monday post will be on August 18th, with a cool surprise coming with it.