Summary
Throne of Eldraine (ELD) was an ambitious set, introducing some highly impactful mechanics toMagic: The Gathering. The set featured Food and adventures for the first time, and the Limited landscape enabled some truly remarkable monocolored decks. Oh yes, and adamant was there too.
Related:Magic: The Gathering: Best Cards From Throne Of Eldraine
Wilds of Eldraine (WOE) looks to bring back some of that fairy tale magic with a second helping of Food and a new multicolored twist on adventures. It also has a fundamentally different approach to its design, basing each two-color pair off a classic fairy tale character and introducing a new mechanic with Role tokens. While the original ELD was designed as something of a hybrid artifact-enchantment set, WOE is more focused on the enchantment side and shaping its Limited landscape around them.
10Keep A Snack In Your Back Pocket
Food in Throne of Eldraine served as fodder for various payoffs but mostly existed to bolster your life total. Wilds of Eldraine has more emphasis on ways to use Food other than just sacrificing it for life, so take stock of your payoffs before you crack your Food tokens.
Assuming you’re not under extreme pressure and need the life right away, you shouldn’t always sacrifice your Food when you have the mana available. You’ll want to keep something lying around if you have cards like Night of the Sweets' Revenge or bargain spells in your hand or library.
9Don’t Let Your Adventures Fizzle
Adventures come with a slew of interesting rule quirks worth committing to memory. Normally, when an adventure resolves, the card goes to exile, from which you can later cast the permanent half of the card.
Casting an adventure like Squeak By or Twice the Rage requires a target, but if your opponent removes the target in response, your entire spell fizzles and ends up in the graveyard without ever going on an adventure. Pick your openings, and wait for the right opportunity touse combat trickadventures.
8Instant-Speed Bargain Combos Aplenty
Bargain’s an extra cost, but creates advantageous openings. You can circumvent detrimental saga chapters by bargaining them away before those chapters trigger. You can permanently exile a creature with The Princess Takes Flight or keep your Reflection tokens from The Apprentice’s Folly by removing those sagas from the field before chapter three happens.
Related:Magic: The Gathering: The Best Sagas In MTG
There’s also Cooped Up, which mimics the Dreadful Apathy plus Flicker of Fate combo from Theros Beyond Death. You can activate the ability, then sacrifice the enchantment to an instant-speed bargain card and get the bonus while still exiling the creature.
7Beat Blue-White At Its Own Game
The Blue-White payoffs like Solitary Sanctuary and Sharae of Numbing Depths care about tapping your opponent’s untapped creatures for various benefits. They’re quite strong, and tap effects are plentiful in the format.
You can blank many of these effects by beating Blue-White decks to the chase and tapping your own creatures. The easiest way to do that is by consistently attacking to keep your creatures tapped down. Alternatively, you can use your own effects, like Plunge into Winter, in response to your opponent’s tappers since most payoffs won’t trigger if the target is already tapped upon resolution.
6A (Dis)enchanting Evening
The bonus sheet name ‘Enchanting Tales’ should be a dead giveaway to maindeck enchantment removal in this set. In addition to Virtues, sagas, and Role tokens, most opponents will probably have a few bonus sheet enchantments in their deck. Thankfully, WOE’s equipped–enchanted, rather–with cards to fend them off.
Break the Spell, Bear Down, and Troublemaker Ouphe are clean answers to enchantments, with Spider Food and Shatter the Oath being a notch below. They’re all maindeckable cards that you should draft highly. Likewise, don’t rely heavily on your own enchantment-based removal; your opponents will likely be equally prepared.
5Let The Deck Dictate The Adventures, Not The Other Way
Some new adventures look like multicolored cards, but you should still run the relevant half even if you’re able to’t reasonably cast the other part. For example, Heartflame Slash should always make your red decks even if you literally can’t cast Heartflame Duelist.
Related:Magic: The Gathering: What Is The Adventure Mechanic?
Conversely, don’t warp your mana base to splash off-color adventures that aren’t worthwhile. Seek the Beast is a respectable draw spell for a red-blue deck, but you shouldn’t feel obligated to include green sources just for Questing Druid. Some adventuresareworth splashing, but it’s not mandatory for every card.
4The Curse Could Break At Any Time
The Cursed Role is the only Role token with a negative effect. They’re essentially mini removal auras that lead to some tricky situations. Your opponent can’t knock your Roles off their creatures, but they can replacetheir own.
Creatures like Spiteful Hexmage and Cursed Courtier enter play pre-enchanted with Curses. If your opponent makes a suspicious attack with one of these, you should be weary of an instant-speed Role-reversal with cards like Monstrous Rage. Also, avoid cursing a creature with the Young Hero Role on it since that allows it to build back up to a sizable threat.
3Celebrate With Sagas And Adventures
The celebration ability word is the basis of Red-White’s entire Limited strategy. The goal is to get your aggressively-slanted celebration payoffs on board, then ensure you have a steady stream of permanents entering the battlefield to keep them ‘online.’
You’ll want to prioritize cards that make two or more permanents on their own. Look fortoken-generation effectsand cards that create both a creature and Role token, like Return Triumphant or Merry Bards. Adventures also help since you can keep the permanent half of your adventures in exile until a turn where you’re able to double-spell with them.
2Beware The Bonus Sheet Trickery
As evidenced byMultiverse Legends from March of the Machine, bonus sheets are excellent for tabletop reprints while also increasing diversity in their Limited formats. However, if you’re a Commander player who only occasionally dabbles in Limited, don’t be tempted by this bonus sheet.
You can open powerhouses like Bitterblossom and Goblin Bombardment, but the sheet is cluttered with Commander staples that are actually quite bad in Limited. Smothering Tithe, Land Tax, Rhystic Study, Sneak Attack, etc. All household names that don’t hold up in 40-card formats. And don’t even look twice at Leylines.
1Don’t Skimp On Your Land Count
Realistically, players should be looking for excuses to playmorelands, not less. It’s better to hit too many lands than to not hit enough, and adventures give you plenty to do with extra mana.
Adventures are alreadya great form of card advantagesince they’re essentially two cards in one.
The more card advantage you have access to, the less willing you should be to cut lands. Keep your land count high if you’re building around draw engines like Garruk’s Uprising or Up the Beanstalk or you just have a ton of adventures in your deck.
Next:Magic: The Gathering: The Best White Cards In Wilds Of Eldraine
