It’s bucketing it down with Tarkir: Dragonstorm spoilers right now, and we’re working to highlight the very best of these new Magic: The Gathering cards. Today, that’s a land card, part of a new cycle of rare utility lands, one for each color and for each clan.
But it’s just one of these cards, the blue land, Mistrise Village, that has everyone talking. It seems like fans can’t decide if this is the sleeper big money rare of the MTG set or just a niche playable.
The effect of this Tarkir Dragonstorm card is certainly intriguing. You can pay one blue mana and tap it to make your next spell impossible to counter. That’s obviously great against control decks, or when you have a really big play that you desperately need to get through.
And the ‘opportunity cost’ of putting this in your deck is pretty low, if you’re in the right colors that is. Each one of these MTG lands has a connection to a particular color combination, in this case Temur. Mistrise Village enters untapped if you control a forest or a mountain, but doesn’t care if you have an island. So it’ll be much easier to play in a Simic, Izzet, or five-color deck.
But how good is Mistrise Village, really? The problem is that usually you’re not going to have the luxury of effectively paying two blue mana extra for your most important spells. In formats like Standard or Modern, I’d anticipate that taking the risk of getting countered is going to be more attractive than waiting a turn or two, almost all of the time.
You’ll probably always slot one copy of Mistrise Village into a deck if you’re in the right colors, anyway, but I doubt you’d use it all that often.
However, in more high-powered formats like Legacy or cEDH I expect Mistrise Village to become dramatically more valuable. Where this utility land excels is forcing certain cards through at a premium, so if your plan is to win the game with a devastating combo, its stock goes way up. Cards like Show and Tell that can cheat big spells out come to mind, immediately, also.
Of course, the extra mana cost will still be a huge barrier to using this utility land, but if your opponent’s grinning face is shouting ‘I have Force of Will in hand’, then having it there as an option is great.
In cEDH especially, I think a ton of decks are going to want this. The chances of someone having a counterspell goes up the more players are at the table, after all, and many competitive commander games are won by getting your combo through unscathed.
For more Tarkir spoilers, check out the set’s planeswalker cards or these neat cards for sacrifice-heavy decks. You might also enjoy our guide to the MTG release schedule, our cEDH tier list or our ranking of the best MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
