Alrund’s Epiphany – Set
Date Reviewed: December 29, 2021
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.08
Casual: 3.83
Limited: 4.00
Multiplayer: 3.50
Commander [EDH]: 3.67
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale: 1 is bad; 3 is average; 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
Anything that gives you extra turns is worth a look, especially since Alrund’s Epiphany has a built-in answer to the question “what are you actually going to do with all those extra turns?” Personally, I don’t like to rely on the opponent simply never getting a turn as the win condition, since it’s pretty miserable if they insist on you playing it out because of their frustration at never getting a turn. Foretell gives you a little bit of versatility, not to mention a psychological edge; it’s also better than the Onslaught block morph cards in constructed, since while the face-down card back then was almost always Exalted Angel, there are a lot of viable options in Kaldheim with which to bluff an opponent. While you can’t recur Alrund’s Epiphany from your graveyard, you can certainly copy it – and the bird tokens give you a pretty good incentive to do so as many times as possible in one turn.
Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
Commander: 3/5
This card was 3rd on my Top 10 Cards of 2021 list.
Alrund’s Epiphany wound up being a spell we actually didn’t review back when Kaldheim was new; admittedly, it didn’t look like much to begin with, since it’s “extra turn with minor upside”. It’s not the cheapest version of the effect, and it does self-exile as a way to mitigate its abuse. The irony is that foretell is what makes this a lot better than it initially looks.
To recap, foretell let you set a card aside, outside of your hand, to play later; this provides a means of safety against targeted or non-targeted discard, which often thwarts expensive spells long before they have a chance to resolve. Blue decks actually had a healthy amount of options they could choose from that had foretell, such as a draw spell or countermagic, and that ambiguity is pretty nice in forcing opponents to play around what you may or may not have. And Alrund’s Epiphany does bring with it two avian perversions to help put pressure on opponents, which is a nice upside. Six mana isn’t cheap to take an extra turn, but the Standard format has enough tools to enable plays like using Galvanic Iteration to copy Alrund’s Epiphany multiple times in the same chain of plays, resulting in a suffocating control lock if you can back it up.
I’d say Alrund’s Epiphany is a card that really shines in conjunction with the pieces that surrounded it; in a vacuum, it’s maybe not all that impressive, but cards rarely ever exist in vacuums, and it turns out that the pieces to make a surprisingly effective control deck exist all together in this Standard. It’s carried its weight all throughout the year and even gotten better with time, which I’d say made it a worthy inclusion on a Top 10 list.
Constructed: 4.25 (it’s integral to the deck that plays it, but I’d say it’s definitely a product of its format)
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 4 (slightly better than other extra turn cards because it supplies some bodies to help with the pummeling)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 4
Alrund’s Epiphany
A fun card to add to control decks (fun for you and not your opponent) because for six mana you get two 1/1 creatures and you can take an extra turn in order to swing for the win (not with the 1/1s but maybe you never know!). I’ve used this so many times in my U/R decks on Arena and it helped to win the game. Your opponent forever fears what your foretell card might be and if you have six mana open well they know it’s not something good! Foretell is so good because it gets around those pesky discard cards like Duress which I think is awesome! I love the mechanic and Alrund’s Epiphany just shows how good of a design this card is (from practical use to the theme itself). This card is how you set up winning the game on the next turn, or it can come in handy and give you a breath of life to help potentially save you from your opponent’s alpha strike! It is one of the better cards printed in Kaldheim.
Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
Commander: 4/5
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