Ready & Willing

Reviewing effectively three cards per day is pretty taxing, but I haven't blown a Fuse yet-- I'm ready and willing to finish out the week. ;)

Ready is a great ace in the hole to follow up a fairly aggressive attack. Much like a Fog, you can use it to feint and lure your opponent into a bad attack, or simply to save ourself from a surprisingly intense assault. Indestructibility means it can also save your team from Mizzium Mortars or the like... or as a combo with Supreme Verdict to leave you as the only person at the table with any creatures.

Willing, meanwhile, is the perfect accompaniment to an all-out attack step. Lifelink helps cushion the inevitable return blow, and deathtouch will either eliminate your opponents' blockers or buffalo them into letting you through for damage. Either way it's a huge swing in your favor, only made stronger by more attackers. Those W/B Modern tokens decks I mentioned yesterday may not find room for Profit & Loss, but they should be Willing to make room for this.

Ready & Willing requires six mana across three colors, but if you can scrounge it up and you have a decent sized army on the board, it's an absolute rout. Your creatures won't die, your opponent's creatures will, and you're gaining a nice chunk of life. It's most ruinous when you're on the defense, since your opponent has already committed to attacking, but if your opponent has enough blockers to assign it can be just as bad on the offense. Especially in Limited, where resolving one essentially says "target player scoops".

Ratings: Ready, Willing, Ready & Willing
Constructed- 2, 4, 3.5
Casual- 2.5, 3.5, 4.5
Limited- 3, 4, 4.5
Multiplayer- 3, 4, 4.5

Ready and Willing

Ready and Willing is easily one of the swingiest of the fuse cards. There will be a lot of times when you play it late game and kill a scourge of dragons with Saprolings, or tempt your opponent into racing and then turn things completely around. This is also one of the fuse cards with the strongest individual components. You'll often be happy to play either half early in the game too - while control decks may adopt Merciless Eviction in response to cards like Voice of Resurgence, you can still use Ready to foil damage spells, and even the thought that you might be holding Willing can make people reluctant to attack with large creatures.

Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5

Today's card of the day is Ready and Willing which is either a three mana Green and White, three mana White and Black, or the total of both when combined with Fuse. Both options are very powerful and can be devastating when Fused together. Even a few creatures untapped and indestructible or given Deathtouch and Lifelink can grant a major change to the game while both nearly wins it outright. Three mana for either side is affordable and efficient plus the flexibility allows many opportunities beyond the typical combat tricks. Supported by tokens and used as a response to an alpha strike or to initiate one there is little outside of Blue that can be done to mitigate the results. This has the potential to carry Black/White/Green tokens into the top tier of current Constructed decks.

In Limited this is unlikely to have the level of token support that other formats can provide, but the heavily creature oriented setting can make it an even more effective endgame play. Splashing Green into Orzhov or Black into Selesnya is absolutely worth it when this is one of your rares, though two White to get Fuse in a Golgari deck is a bit more difficult. The cost is quite manageable and it is an easy first pick in Booster and Sealed that can be played in any of the above guilds even without splashing.

Constructed: 4.0
Casual: 4.0
Limited: 4.0
Multiplayer: 4.0