New EDH Bomb!!

Okay, I was going to wait until the whole set had spoiled to do an EDH Set Review for M11, and I still intend to do that, but I just had to post something about this card:

Holy shit!

Now, you may not see what all the fuss is, right of the bat, so let's break it down. First, we have a 6/6 for 6 mana - good, but hardly broken in Green. Add Trample, and now were about in line with another Green mythic. Ah, now we're getting somewhere, but the real meat is in the wall of text between the word "Trample" and the flavor text.

Whenever Primeval Titan enters the battlefield or attacks,

you may search your library for up to two land cards, put

them onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library.

Okay, there are two key details you might have overlooked. First, the phrase "or attacks" - so you get the ability right off the bat, just for casting this bad boy... then you get it again if it actually lives to attack. Every time it attacks. Second, the part that really makes this a bomb - you can get ANY LAND!! That's right, not just basic lands - boring old Forest, Plains, etc... You can get any non-basic land in your deck. Two at a time.

Now, in some decks, this might just be a "good" ability, but in EDH it will be damn near BROKEN. I currently have three EDH decks that can tap for Green mana, and all three are going to want a copy of this card. Let's examine, shall we?

First up is Rafiq of the Many (you can find the decklist conveniently in the post before this one). What can the Primeval Titan bring to my Rafiq deck?

Well, for one thing, a 6/6 trampler is pretty good with Rafiq. Just imagine this guy swinging as a 7/7 Trampling Double-striker... Now imagine this guy swinging with Finest Hour on the table. 4 lands per turn seems pretty good to me, but honestly your opponent might be dead before you get to untap them!


Remember, though, that we're not just dumping mana on the board here. We can get some neat utility lands too! Now here are just a few of the interesting lands you can fetch with this guy:

High Market: Good land to have against Blue mages - good luck casting Treachery now, punk!

Kor Haven: Great utility land against certain decks (I'm looking at you, Thraximundar!), makes it kinda hard for them to win through General damage.

New Benalia: Scry 1, anybody?

Vesuva: Take out an opposing legendary land, like Volrath's Stronghold or Minamo, School at Water's Edge.Or just copy one of your more useful lands.

Yavimaya Hollow: A great little utility land to help protect Rafiq, or the Titan for that matter.

And finally, here's one that I'm not currently running, but I can guarantee you it will be going in right along with the Titan:

Oh yeah, baby! Anywho, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Moving on, then...


Another deck I'm running is Uril, the Mistwalker. This is a deck that likes to have lots of mana, so the mana acceleration helps tremendously here, more-so than in Rafiq. Many of the same utility lands apply here as well, though, given the two-color overlap. But a few new lands present themselves, but the most notable one here is Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion. This is a card that I love, and have kept in the deck out of hope that it will win me the game some day, but alas, the activation is a bit steep and I've never got to use it. Ironically the one time I could have activated it and had it be relevant, I top-decked Runes of the Deus, the one card in the deck that absolutely trumped Sunhome in that instance. However, if the Primeval Titan lives long enough to attack once or twice, you should have no trouble not only finding Sunhome, but paying for it too!

The Titan plays very well with Landfall, of course, and I'm already running the Rampaging Baloths, so those two will make quite the pair, should I ever get them both out. Just imagine Tooth-and-Nail-ing for these two guys: you get two 6/6 tramplers, two lands and two 4/4 beast tokens right of the bat. Add to that one of many ways to give them haste: Lightning Greaves, Fires of Yavimaya, Sarkhan Vol, and Anger - all of which are in my deck already - then you immediately get two more lands, and thus two more 4/4 tokens, ready to block (too late to declare them as attackers by this stage).


The one bad thing about this guy is that the lands do come into play tapped. Oh well, but if it's too much of a drawback for you, might is suggest Bear Umbra, or Garruk Wildspeaker to make use of your newly fetched lands right away.


And so we now come to Vorosh the Hunter. My Vorosh deck is a very Control-oriented build, and the one thing I have been needing to do is squeeze in just a bit more mana acceleration and another good finisher or two. Well, folks, the Primeval Titan just happens to fit both into one efficient package!


Here are just a few of the useful lands it can fetch: Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Volrath's Stronghold, Phyrexian Tower, Temple of the False God, Gargoyle Castle, and the list goes on. Another neat trick is to grab a Ravnica bounce-land with the Titan and bounce a Cycling land that you played early on and no longer need. Return it to your hand and cycle it away!

Aside from being a competent finsher, the Titan plays well with certain other cards in the Vorosh deck.

Obviously, copying the Titan with Vesuvan Shapeshifter is good. Or use Body Double if your oppoent has removal handy for the first one. But this is EDH, the format of big dumb plays - so lets think bigger, shall we? How about a fully-kicked Rite of Replication? Five 6/6 tramplers and TEN LANDS?!?! Sure, I'll take that! If you manage not to win the game after that play, you are almost certainly doing something very wrong.

Another cute little trick is to use the Titan to fetch Urborg while you have a Nirkana Revenant out. What are you going to do with 50 black mana? What, you mean besides playing Rite of Replication with Kicker? I don't know but I'm sure you'll... think... of... something...

I recently cut the Revenant because it was too hard to get Urborg out if I drew her. I didn't want to run Expedition Map or Sylvan Scrying just to get Urborg because if I drew them WITHOUT drawing the Nirkana Revenant they'd be all but dead cards. But the Titan is unlikely to be a dead card even without the revenant, or if I have already drawn Urborg. So I can put the Revenant back in along with the Titan, and guess what? Both are good threat creatures, AND they both help increase my mana production. Win-Win!

So yeah, if you have an EDH that taps for Green, I strongly suggest you play this guy. I know I will be!