Thursday, September 17, 2020

Zendikar Rising Set Review: Green

 Ah, the color of ramp and draw. Green may well be the best color in the format, though of course it is a close competition between it, Blue, and Black. And it only gets better when you combine them - Golgari, Simic and Sultai are probably the best two- and three-color combinations in the format. Or perhaps I'm just biased because those colors do the things I like to do best. Oh well. On with the show.

Green

Landharmonicon.

Landharmonicon on a big, beefy stick. 

With Reach.

And a Crucible of Worlds stuck to it. 

Well, okay sure. Why not?
Ashaya seem quite powerful, and quite different from some of the more popular Mono-Green commanders of late. Definitely feels like she tends toward a different deck type from the likes of Yisan, Selvala or Omnath. Yet, she still feels quintessentially green. I'm certainly interested to see how she develops, but not yet committed to trying to build her myself. 
I don't see the option to play this as a land to be enough of a deal-sweetener to get me to play this over Eternal Witness or Regrowth. Just seems downright mediocre.

I think WotC was playing it extra safe with this mechanic, and probably rightfully so, but I also think maybe they played it just a hair too safe. Very few of these cards are at all exciting or even just good enough. But hopefully they will be successful enough that WotC decides it's safe to push the next crop of them just a wee bit more.
This would be the face card of one of those precon decks they used to do. It's big and splashy, and makes new players go "whoah, awesome!" but in reality they're just overcosted jank.

While I certainly like everything this card does - I just don't see 10 mana as a viable cost for it.  
I feel much the same about this Inscription as I do the other two. I generally like everything the card does and more or less want to do those things, but I'm not quite sold on the overall package. 

That said, I feel like this one has the most potential out of the three, as it is cheap, provides solid utility across the three effects, and, unlike the others, I wouldn't feel bad about casting this one un-Kicked for just one of its effects.

(Okay, the lifegain one is pretty terrible on it's own, but you get the point.)
I really like this effect but I hate the CMC. I really wish this was just an enchantment instead of a creature, and cost 1 or 2 mana less. Or even if it was just a smaller creature, like a 2/2 for 4 mana, that'd be cool. It'd be especially good in Ezuri, Claw of Progress if it were a 2-power creature instead. 

Alas, it's ALMOST a card I'd play but they had to give it a beefy stat line and totally wreck its potential. 
Oh, cool, a creature with Landfall that can also just be a land. I appreciate that kind of symmetry. A 3/3 for three isn't bad either. Landfall trigger is fine. The only thing holding this back, really, is the lack of Trample. 

WotC has had a habit for a while now of being far too liberal with their use of Trample, just tacking it on to almost every big, beefy boi they can. Then people complain they they're overdoing it, and they listen... but as a result we get cards like this. Cards that actually NEED Trample, but can't get it cause they wasted all their Trample points on big dumb mythics that had too much going on already. 
Okay so this has some cute interactions. Basically with anything that says "Whenever you gain life...". Some of my favorite examples include: Archangel of Thune, Dawn of Hope, Drogskol Reaver or Heliod the Sun-Crowned. 

Probably does some work in Tatyova as well. 

I also enjoy how it negates the drawback of Fastbond, even though Fastbond is (rightfully) banned in EDH. 

Cool design, but not sold on it's effectiveness even in a dedicated +1/+1 counters deck. Maybe it gets the job done, maybe not. I'd have to see it in action first.

Obviously gets better if you drop Hardened Scales beforehand. 
Almost-Harrow-but-not-quite. It's worse than Harrow, of course, because the lands enter tapped. That's relevant more than you'd think. However, it does have one niche case where it can be safer than Harrow - the sacrifice is not part of the cost, but part of the effect, so that means if someone counters this, you don't lose the land. In counter-heavy metas this almost certainly replaces Harrow if you were even running Harrow to begin with. 

Also it is just fine to run as a second copy of Harrow in decks like Gitrog or Korvold.
This card kind of feels like a nightmare to keep track of in paper Magic. Online, it's no big deal, but in paper? Yeesh. Keeping track of what are ordinary 1/1's and what are 1/1's that make 1/1's is just kind of a lot. I hope this card is dirt cheap because I think the best way to manage it in paper is to literally just by a fuckton of them and use them as the tokens once you hit six lands. 

Logistical nightmare aside, this card is hilarious and awesome and I'm absolutely going to run it in any landfall-related deck I can. 

There are always more scute bugs.
Not sure what this does for your deck even if you're deep on the +1/+1 counter plan. There are certainly better options for whatever slot this would take.
Party on, Garth!
Man, that's rough. This just does not compare favorably to similar effects such as See the Unwritten or Selvala's Stampede. For seven mana, you only get the one creature, and you only get the counters as a bonus of you play a 3-or-less dork. That's some weaksauce shit right there. 

That said, Green has been given some of the most ridiculous mythics lately so getting one dud ought not to sting so much. It's just that this card COULD be really cool and playable without being blatantly overpowered... but instead it is blatantly underpowered.
Quite expensive to Kick, but it's quite an effect if you do. I like the card in theory but I'm not sure if it will be quite good enough for most decks. It certainly deserve a chance, though.

It almost certainly makes the cut in Hallar, though as both the Kicker keyword itself and the kicked effect synergize with him perfectly.
I guess I shouldn't have been so saddened by all those blue Kicker support cards that can't be played in Hallar, because it turns out Green did get some good support as well. 

Speaking of Hallar, we have an Eternal Witness that is tailor-made for a Kicker deck. It's far to niche to be useful anywhere else, but it's definitely a welcome addition to that specific deck. 

1 comment:

  1. Hey dude its Darksteel Elephant from the old forums, long time no see. I'm commenting here to tell you that we have a discord server now those of us who were on the forums, if you want to join just reply here.

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