Lord Skitter’s Blessing– Wilds of Eldraine
Date Reviewed: September 26, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 4.13
Limited: 4.13
Multiplayer: 3.38
Commander [EDH]: 3.63
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Lord Skitter’s Blessing shows up as a strange convergence of concepts, if you dig into it. You don’t get an enormous number of black cards that like enchantments – although there are significantly more than there were before the first Theros block, it’s still not the main color for such positive synergies. But in Wilds of Eldraine, everyone is using the Role tokens and every color needs something that interacts with them in some way. Getting a Phyrexian Arena along with your role tokens is a pretty good deal on its face, and it does become more likely to fire off as you add more Roles and auras to your deck, which means black actually has something to do when it comes to the set’s themes.
I do want to see what this can do in bigger formats, mainly the casual ones. You could always just play Phyrexian Arena in your Enchantress deck, since it is also an enchantment already; but that wouldn’t synergize with cards like Aura Gnarlid. It seems like an interesting angle to try – in such a deck, it might end up giving you way more than two mana worth of value.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
I’ve talked about the various role tokens of Wilds of Eldraine in the past, so here’s a pretty potent user and abuser of the mechanic. Lord Skitter’s Blessing grants a creature you control a Wicked Role token enchantment, which is a minor buff…but if it lives to your draw step (or any enchanted creature), this starts to function a bit like Phyrexian Arena, which has always been a solid source of additional card draw. For two mana, this is surprisingly potent, both a +1/+1 buff to a creature and a Phyrexian Arena…
…with the caveat being that you need to protect the creature, and that’s where things get muddy. It’s certainly reasonable to be able to curve a turn one creature into this, and you get going, but one piece of removal turns this off until you find another Aura (or source for an Aura), and that can be a bit fraught. I think this card needs to be reliably online on turn 2, otherwise it’s just a poor man’s Phyrexian Arena. Which is certainty not a bad place for a card to be, but I’d still take the surety over the more variable option.
Constructed: 3.5 (might shine without Arena, might also have a niche in Aura-based decks like Bogles)
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
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