Yawgmoth's Destiny: Artifacts, Land and Roundup
Brought to you, like everything else this month, by Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Evil is his one and only name, and evil is his one and only game, but you can call him Yawgmoth.
Yawgmoth's Destiny: White (Part 1) Yawgmoth's Destiny: Blue (Part 2) Yawgmoth's Destiny: Black (Part 3) Yawgmoth's Destiny: Red (Part 4) Yawgmoth's Destiny: Green (Part 5)
June 16, 1999
T: Gain 1 life. All: Weak
It's mostly an improvement over Fountain of Youth. But against the decks where you need to gain life, this is going to have much less effect than real defense like Caltrops or Propaganda. They have permanents that do two damage to you every turn, and the creatures cost as little as one mana to do so. If you're going to pay three, one life isn't good enough. You'll fall behind. If you can stabilize against them then this will prevent red decks burning you out without a Cursed Scroll, but in that situation you've virtually already won, and it would be better to have a flexible life gainer like Radiant's Dragoons or Spike Feeder. The other way to use this is in a deck with Yawgmoth's Bargain, but those decks work so quickly that there isn't time for this to be good. In a Necropotence deck in Extended you have a similar problem, and the problem of Nevinyrral's Disk.
2,T,Sac: Search your library for a basic land and put it into your hand. All: Useless
For what it does, this costs way too much. You spend three mana to go get a basic land, and that's horrible. It puts the land into your hand, so this doesn't result in mana acceleration of any kind. If you need to use this to run a five color deck, think about running a two color deck or basing your deck in green for Fertile Ground and/or Yavimaya Granger and Birds of Paradise. Sextant is so bad that you'd rather have a Sol Grail.
2/1. 2, sac: Draw a card. All: Useless
Yavimaya Elder as an artifact without the ability to get two lands when it dies. You know what I think of the Elder. At any rate, this is far too expensive.
Caltrops 3
Whenever a creature attacks, Caltrops deals one damage to that creature. All: Excellent
Caltrops nullifies a large portion of most creature decks. Two Caltrops will make most creature decks with most of their cards lands and creatures that can never attack. Even with one, their deck can probably be handled by a Forbid lock. And it only takes one creature that can't attack for the card to break even. Practically speaking, this is a natural for at least the sideboard of any deck that doesn't care about it. Another question is whether it goes with Humility instead of Orim's Prayer. I'd say that you play at least one of both, whichever you emphasize, so you can defend against Rancor with Caltrops and against artifact destruction with Orim's Prayer.
Extruder 4
4/3, echo. Sacrifice an artifact: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. All: Useless
It's a good ability, and gives you a lot of flexibility, but you can't pay eight mana for it.
4T, sac a creature: Do 4 damage to target creature. All: Useless
It's amazing in limited, and it has great flavor text, but in constructed the casting and activation costs are prohibitive if the card can't target players.
1/1, flying. When Junk Diver dies, return another artifact from your graveyard to your hand. All: Useless
It's a Treasure Hunter that triggers on death, which can only weaken the card. Its advantage is that as an artifact you can target one Diver with another, allowing an infinite loop. But its very limited value as a creature means that that loop has to do something other than keep one of them in play. The best anyone's come up with that I know of is Alluren and an Alter of Dementia, which isn't that bad, but requires two cards costing 2GG and 2, plus a Driver in hand and one in the graveyard. At least for now, that's not good enough.
3/3. 2: Gains flying. 2: Gains first strike. All: Useless
If both abilities were built in, it would still be a very expensive creature for its abilities. Having to pay for them saves constructed players the trouble of thinking about the card in the rare situation where you might have wanted it.
4/4. 2: Regenerate. 2: Deals 1 to target creature. EX: Useless T2,US: Good
Masticore takes away your deck, since it requires you to discard a card a turn, and in exchange you get a 4/4 that regenerates and the ability to kill creatures with colorless mana. Against some decks, among them Suicide Black and Sligh, this combination is better than their whole deck. Against others, it may well not be. Once you've given up several cards to it, it's generally too late to back out. At that point, either you have something like Temporal Aperture to make the upkeep bearable, or you sit back and hope they can't deal with the Masticore before they die. The board control this card gives is amazing, though.
1\2. T: Reveal X artifacts to get X+X colorless mana. All: Weak
It's got potential, no question. But right now, it's not worth it. The deck for this card would have a lot of expensive artifacts in it, many with expensive activation costs. Depending on Metalworker is a major problem between the one turn delay and its vulnerability as a 1\2. At three mana, you can cast Worn Powerstone, which should be enough for most practical purposes outside an engine. And this isn't a good card for any present engine.
Growing. T, sac: Destroy all creatures and artifacts with converted mana cost equal to the number of fuse counters on Powder Keg. All: Good
Many decks have a lot of one casting cost creatures, and this takes them all out when you need to as a fast effect. There's one turn before you can do that, but at a cost of two that's more than fair. While it's at it, it kills off Cursed Scroll. For decks that don't have a ton of ones, you can let it grow beyond that. Four can be a good number against blue, for example. In general, unless you're very unlucky you'll be able to destroy something. It doesn't belong in every deck, but in defensive decks that don't have one-cost permanents this is probably worth it. You could combine it with Caltrops, since anything that costs only one mana can't attack under the Caltrops, and this can take out the quick rush if you can't get Caltrops yet or it can take out the 2-level that can get through, for example against Mogg Flunkies. Remember that destroying one card is already a fair trade. In a deck that leaves open the 1 and 2 levels, I'd be very tempted. It's also a way for blue to get rid of the one or two creatures that got in under the first Miscalculation.
3T: Choose a color and a number greater than 0, and look at target opponent's hand. If they have that many cards of that color in their hand, draw a card. All: Weak
The question here is how often your opponent will have an empty hand. This is significantly cheaper than Jayemade Tomb, and lets you see your opponent's hand. But if there's nothing to hit, you never draw a card, and you'll miss a decent portion of the time anyway. Between responses to the activation and drawing a card per turn, getting this to be better than a normal Tomb is going to be difficult. I can see it if your deck really wants to see its opponent's hand, though.
As long as Storage Matrix is untapped, each player can only untap his choice of artifacts, creatures and lands during their untap phase. Watch out - those enchantments don't untap at all! All: Weak
The key is not to care, of course. As with all of these 'doesn't untap' artifacts, you design your deck to work around the restriction. In this case, that's pretty easy. You just don't play creatures, and don't play artifacts that tap. Or the creatures you do play are defensive and don't tap (or untap anyway, like Morphling). Or you tap the Matrix with Ring of Gix. The question then is how badly Storage Matrix gums up the works on the other side. I think the answer is: Not much. The default is that they untap all their land every turn, unless they're doing damage to you with creatures, in which case they untap the creatures. Either way, they're not suffering too badly. If they need to untap artifacts as well, and don't have Rings, it could be frustrating, but still not terribly so. Most decks have more mana then they need after the first few turns, and can absorb these kinds of losses pretty well. With Propaganda you would get a good amount of control over the situation, but just as good would be a second Propaganda, or a Ring of Gix, or one of a few other tapping effects. At any rate, this is no Winter Orb.
Taps for 3 mana. EX: Weak T2,US: Good
The Dynamo gives gigantic mana advantage in the long run, letting you use powerful effects like Temporal Aperture and Wildfire like its nothing and in general violate the laws of Magic for fun and profit. In addition, you get three of the four mana back the moment you cast it, and even profit by it if you have a Key. The problem is that your deck has to be able to get to four mana without it. That's not a small price to pay at all, because that means your deck will be at least half mana, but there are ways to make that price worth paying. One other thing to watch out for is not being able to function without one.
1T,remove from game: Target player reshuffles his or her graveyard into his or her library. All: Weak
It's Feldon's Cane, with the added twist that it can work on your opponent and an activation cost of one. Feldon's Cane is one of the cards people play way too much, and this will probably be overused as well. This is probably better than the Cane, because you can use it to fizzle graveyard effects of your opponent, in particular Oath of Ghouls and Living Death, and can also work with those two cards. But don't get any ideas: I don't think using this card that way is that good. It is nice to have it back in case you need it, though.
3/3. As long as it is enchanted, it gains +2/+2, flying, first strike, trample, fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. EX: Useless T2: Weak US: Good
With an enchantment on it, this is one of the best creatures there is for five mana. Unenchanted, it's a piece of junk. The question is, what is the critical number of creature enchantments you have to play before this is good? Don't leave home without Rancor. After that, the quality falls off quickly. Gaea's Embrace would turn this into a real monster, and fill in regeneration as the last ability that's missing. You could just use something silly cantrip enchantment as well. The best enchantment for it, of course, is to put Treachery on your opponent's Thran Golem. Actually, the resulting monster is so big you could play it in U/G and sometimes actually put Treachery on it just to have it enchanted. But with other five-cost creatures out there (especially in green) that should win games by themselves, this will probably be more trouble than its worth most of the time.
When it comes into play, choose a creature type. Creatures of that type cost 2 less to play. All: Useless
Since you can only play so many of any one creature type unless it's one of the weenie races which don't benefit from this effect that much, you need to be constantly recasting whatever creature you name, if possible as part of an infinite combination. Since there are better ways to knock the cost down by one, it needs at least two colorless mana in its casting cost. The obvious first choice would be Palinchron, but this still leaves you needing three extra mana from your seven lands, and probably needing more than that since you probably don't have seven lands. Also, this is only one mana cheaper than Sneak Attack. The one way this seems like it would be worth it would be with 2 Peregrine Drakes and Equilibrium. Also note that with a City of Traitors or Gaea's Cradle you can use a Cloud of Faeries in place of the second Drake. Is this going to be better than using a Medallion? More to the point, is this combo even worth thinking about? The win condition would always require Equilibrium, although there would be a very decent number of games where you just beat him down with Palinchrons or Drakes. Outside this very long shot, this card is rarely even going to give you the three mana back.
And the only land:
Yavimaya Hallow
Legendary Land T: Add 1 to your mana pool. G,T: Regenerate target creature. For all its traps and defenses, Yavimaya still can't hold a candle to Yawgmoth's Bargain. EX: Useless T2: Good US: Excellent
The Hallow is a good card. For a small price, you give regeneration to all your creatures for two mana once per turn cycle. That's going to give you the long term edge over another green deck, or over a burn deck. The drawback is being colorless instead of green, but one or two of these are probably a good bet for green creature decks. It's Legendary, though, so don't go overboard. This is probably going to be similar to Volrath's Stronghold. In Extended, though, the green creature decks have no time to worry about this.
That's the end of Urza's Destiny. I received a good number of responses to my request for cards I overlooked. Of the four responses that came in more than twice, three were the cards I misread: Lurking Jackals, Goblin Marshall and Trumpet Blast. Therefore I'm going to look at the three other cards I got more than one response on: Emperor Crocodile (three), Ravenous Rats (three), and Yavimaya Elder (seven).
Four mana for a 5/5 is pretty good. But the drawback prevents its toughness from having its full effect. You can kill the Crocodile by killing all other creatures on the same side, or even by bouncing those creatures. Wildfire will normally kill it, for example. To use it, you have to be vulnerable to either removal as mass removal or mass removal as really massive removal. As a four casting cost spell, it can't win the game unless you also keep another creature in play, and four casting cost spells have to win games. A lot of this is just restating what I said before, and I realize that. Again, I'll point out that the restriction only gets you about a mana, because spells like Weatherseed Treefolk are only one more mana. I realize that this could be pretty solid, and that it might have a place in, say, a Tradewind U/G deck with loads of toughness. But given the level of control needed for this card to work well, I don't like it that much. The recent reply suggested putting it into s stompy deck, which would be another logical place for it. As was pointed out, Wildfire crushes the deck. In addition, his suggested creature to combine it with was Albino Troll. This would require saving two mana to regenerate the Troll, which means you have six mana. If you can go to that kind of trouble, you don't need the discount. In particular, I just hate having half your games begin looking at a turn 2 5/5 that would instantly die if you cast it (with the Vineyard).
Eric Taylor is the great champion of the Ravenous Rats. He thinks they're amazing. The basic argument goes like this: You get a card with them. And a 1/1 is far from useless. So together, you come out ahead. But I don't think that's true. Often, your opponent will have a card he doesn't need, or no cards at all. Sometimes, this effect will even help him. You hit a Yawgmoth's Bargain, and he goes and casts Replenish. Many decks have something similar that can happen. If decks that are forced to trade with 1/1s are the order of the day, this is a good card. If they're not, it isn't unless you're returning it to your hand a lot.
This was the big one. Many people just love this card. The argument is a pretty good one: It's a three for one, often even a four for one. How can that be bad? Well, there's enough cards that aren't bad to fill out green creature decks already. Green decks already have to play more mana than they would like, since their mana sources normally include Llanowar Elf, Birds of Paradise, Gaea's Cradle, and other mana sources that can be killed if they're important and require other mana sources to get off the ground. If you need the mana from the Elder enough, you're going to have to pay five mana to get it. That's not a very good deal in the situation where you need a mana. If you don't need mana, and this will normally be the situation, this is just a deck thinning ability. This isn't worth it, either. All that's theoretical. What convinced me was just asking myself the question: What deck does the Elder go in? I've had two suggestions. One was that it go in Stompy. I don't think that a Stompy deck which has three mana out wants this as its spell. In addition, the two forests are probably all but worthless to it. The other suggestion was that it go in Survival. When would you tutor for it? This was how I cut all the stupid creatures from my Rome deck for the PTQs: I realized I never needed to go get a card, so it left the deck. In this case, I think that when you would get the Elder you'd rather have a Yavimaya Granger almost all the time. The place where I see the card coming closest is in U/G decks that center on Tradewind Rider. It's not a bad card, and it has its place. I just don't think it's a large or important one.
Additional Notes on Yawgmoth's Bargain:
As I finish this, a Yawgmoth's Bargain deck has been posted on to New Wave. It's not the best version I've seen by any means - in particular, it contains some cards it doesn't need and whose slots could be better used. It is, however, a good example of one of the six basic combo Bargain decks I know about that are worth playing.
I will be at GP:DC and at Nationals.
Good luck and happy deckbuilding, everyone.
Zvi Mowshowitz