A Change of Pace

I am going to take a break from the werewolves for a while. We need some support and I hope the next set will provide the help needed for the werewolf menace. Today I want to explore Essence of the Wild.

Talk about a cool card. CMC of 6, which is not bad for green, the three green requirement means that the deck will have to be heavy on the green side, however. The main drawback for this card is that it competes with Primeval Titan. The titans suck all of the oxygen out of the room, so I long for the day the titans withdraw from standard.

Even with the oppression of the Titans (where is Zeus when you need him?), we can find a few cool tricks with non-titan 6cc mythic creatures.

The Goods on Essence


Essence of the Wild has cool art and is a 6/6 for 6. This is not all that exciting for a six drop, but the cool part is what happens to every other creature that put into play after that. LSV (Louis Scott-Vargas) did not like the card in his set review. See his article here. But I am not sure that we can't find a way to make this fun and a real threat. Hexproof would have been a nice addition especially since it is a mythic, but R&D did not go there. What we have is a reverse shapeshifter, where all your creatures copy the essence. What is essence anyway? Glad you asked.

The flavor text gets at the idea. Green is big dudes. The wild overtaking someone makes them a 6/6 creature. So, how do we overcome the LSV complaint? I can think of a few ways to make this card more of a threat. First, the card needs to get onto the battlefield quickly. Green can ramp to 6 in short order. Second, Spot removal is a problem so when he hits the table more creatures need to start hitting the table also. The idea I have is not one Essence of the Wild, but many. If you can stick an essence and then Genesis Wave, it starts to get cool. Here is what I have been working with.



The idea is ramp up with one drops bust out the Essence and then my additional one drops become a vanilla 6/6.  Genesis Wave works only after you have an Essence of the Wild on the battlefield, but when you do, three or four 6/6 is not unreasonable.

I like Jade Mage as a mana sink, chump blocker production, and when the EOTW is in play unlimited 6/6 creatures for 3 at instant speed is not bad at all. Another option for recurring token generation is Throne of Empires or Druidic Satchel. The advantage of the mage is unlimited 3 for a token while you have to tap the throne and you have tap the satchel and hope you hit a creature. The advantages are that after you have an essence in play the artifacts don't come into play as a copy (this kind of goes against getting more and more 6/6 creatures, however). The artifacts are more resilient than a 2/1, however. The satchel is more versatile but less reliable for tokens. I will have to experiment and see how things work out.

All of the creatures are 3 or less except EOTW. That not only maximizes the ability to hit creatures with a Genesis Wave, fetching new 6/6 creatures with Green Sun's Zenith can be done for as little as 2 when EOTW is in play.




Probably need to cut one Caravan Vigil, but I put them in to see how they help the game play (they would be really good with flashback).

Try things out and see what you think.