Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Lands is one of those themes where the cards that care about lands are much better than the lands themselves. Unless you're happy to have cards at the power level of Gaea's Cradle or you want to do wacky stuff with Lotus Field or something, your options are pretty limited beyond the obvious manlands, cycling lands, sac lands etc
 
Unfortunately, I think Trainmaster is right on Hokori.

I do the exact same thing with bicycles and horizon lands, Velrun!

And, I have a solution to wanting the cycling lands. May I present to you:



I run 10 of them, which may be overkill, but they're good, albeit mediocre, fixing for any color. They also get lands into the graveyard and power cycling-related things. AND, if you're feeling really spicy, you can use them to power an Eldrazi theme because they can produce {c}! I'm tempted to make a cube in which Eldrazi are actually supported and there are no fixing lands besides a bunch of these bad boys. Hmm....
 
Ash Barrens is well-known in these forums. :) And a lot of people play either a lot of Barrens or EWilds/TExpanse, supporting cycling/landfall while being nerfed fixers.
 
Oh, absolutely, but a) it hadn't been mentioned this time yet and b) I don't know anyone else who actually runs as many as I do--I'm not joking when I say I run 10 of them, and I'm also not joking when I say you should at least consider running a bunch of them.

In fact, let's make this official: if someone has run 11 or more Ash Barrens in their cube before 8:30 PM EST January 11, 2021, I will cede title of Ash Baron to them.
 
If you have a ton of removal floating around, I'd say no to Yasova unless you also have plenty of ramp in GU or RG. If you're pretty sure that it will survive untapping, then I'd give her a go - 3+3 is cheaper than 6 in Magic, after all (just like how 1+1+1=7. Magic's math is weird.)
 
What do people think of this little aura?



The important bit is that you can cast it on your opponent's creatures and still control where the damage goes. If that doesn't seem like a good play, you can just drop it on one of your creatures and give it firstest strike.
 
It's a really convoluted way of saying "Enchanted creature can't attack" almost all of the time. I guess if you want to build a "cryptic cube" it would be good, and it's not too bad in red control, but doesn't seem to be interesting enough to be worth a slot or the cognitive load to understand it.
 


How busted is this when you can recur fetchlands and it doesn't blow up in the spot? Because it seems it can draw a massive amount of cards very quickly.
 
It's only as busted as "no ETB effect + active and ongoing sacrifice effect" can get, which isn't overly busted. It's a centerpiece card for a GB Rock deck, but by no means making people flip tables.

The fact that it can drive neat synergies like drawing off a fetch, pairing with Crucible effects, triggering Revolt-type mechanics, or powering a Loam engine really make it an interesting choice for me. No dumb ETB blast.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Image.ashx


Sulfuric Vortex that can ramp and graveyard hate and gain life and attack?
 
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