Imprisoned in the Moon – Eldritch Moon
Date Reviewed: November 12, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.38
Commander [EDH]: 4.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
This card depicts a point near the end of the Eldritch Moon story, where Tamiyo and Nissa put Emrakul into Innistrad’s moon. Yes, you heard me. The strangest part was not even that – it was that Emrakul, to the extent that conventional beings can understand her, seemed to want to go into the moon. I’m not sure that even two powerful planeswalkers could have done it otherwise!
I was wondering if this point would be revisited in Midnight Hunt or Crimson Vow, but there turned out not to be room in the sets – and on reflection, I actually think that’s just as well. Those who know that Emrakul is in the moon feel it as a threat hanging over the entire setting. The fact is, Imprisoned in the Moon is a pretty significant threat in gameplay too. The big draw is that it removes the targeted permanent’s abilities: static and triggered abilities were already everywhere in 2016, and if anything there’s even more of them now. This also means that the card’s ability to enchant a land is more broadly relevant, unlike One with the Stars where it’s just to prevent it from falling off the target. You can target something like Field of the Dead, slowing down or stopping a combo that might otherwise be hard to interact with. And ever since the Commander rules committee changed the way it works when you try to put someone’s commander into their library, cards that disable scary legendary creatures but leave them on the table have been much more useful than they look.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4
If you want to deal with something, yeeting it into the moon seems like a reasonable plan. Imprisoned in the Moon neutralizes pesky permanents of different kinds, and while you’re most likely to aim this at a creature or planeswalker, this can mitigate the threat of particularly problematic lands in a pinch if you need it to. It’s not a permanent answer, and there can occasionally be times where the extra land is a problem…all the same, though, this is a good way to keep something from being more of a problem in the short term. It returning to Standard gives blue a flexible answer that can keep an irksome creature in check if need be; this is a bit too slow for the deepest formats, but Standard and Pioneer may well be able to make good use of it.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 4.25 (an excellent way to disable a commander)
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