It's tempting to compare this to Cultivate, and
I suspect it's going to be tempting to do so
unfavorably - I mean, doesn't everyone want to
enable their two minor splash colors with a
single casting? However, I think I'm going to
try to resist that urge. Remember, searching for
two lands in the long-established style is
essentially drawing cards: it looks less
powerful than Divination, but that's mainly
because we tend not to remember the times we
cast Divination and drew two lands. Green decks
always have something to do with extra lands of
any type or basic orientation, and a card like
this can take you to a point where you can just
start casting your endgame spells (and beyond if
you can get to the spell mastery condition).
Welcome back readers today's card of the day is
basically a better Cultivate if your playing
mono green the power of Nissas's Pilgrimage
allows you to thin your deck of lands even more
and insure you will hit further land drops, with
the promise of Zendikar on the horizon this
could be invaluable with landfall, speculation
aside how does this card fare? Average unable to
get other colors of mana limits this cards
playability and narrows it to heavy ramp focused
strategies using green. In standard ramp decks
are for now leaning more and more towards
creatures like Sylvan caratyid or Elvish Mystic
rendering this card unimpressive, in other
competitive formats its too slow to see much
competitive play. In casual and multoplayer this
card shines triggering spell mastery is easy and
Cultivate is a real card, for some decks this
will be a solid addition to ramp or for mono
green decks simply an upgrade. In casual and
commander this card will see solid play for
years to come. In limited it ramps but does not
necessarily interact with your opponents board
or develop yours beyond ramping, if you have
huge green creatures or a deck based around late
game drops definitely a consideration. Overall a
casual power house that may see a niche amount
of play.
Today's card of the day is Nissa's Pilgrimage
which is a three mana Green sorcery that can
search for two Forests or three with Spell
Mastery and put one into play tapped. This
is a very solid acceleration card that thins the
deck or adds cards to hand for other effects,
though the Spell Mastery might be somewhat
problematic for a creature heavy build.
Aside from that drawback this is strong in any
deck with more than a small splash of Forests
and should be popular in most formats and a
probably staple in Commander.
In Limited this is a very useful tool that can
greatly thin out a deck in a forty card
environment and should always be played when
running Green in Sealed. For Booster this
is a good early pick after a Green rare and has
no real drawback.
It's an interesting take on Kodama's Reach.
While the forest-only clause won't win it any
points in tricolor decks, it's alright in dual
color, and pretty nice in mono green. It's great
in EDH. The spell mastery nets you an extra
forest, so in mono green it's a strictly better
Reach. It's not a card that'll win you a game,
but it'll get you closer. Solid card all
around.
