Verdant Confluence – Commander Masters
Date Reviewed: August 18, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 1.38
Casual: 3.50
Limited: 4.00
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.50
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
The Confluence cycle was a decently well-liked cycle of cards from Commander 2015, offering flexibility in effects for a slight overpay. Verdant Confluence, unfortunately, might be among its weaker members…this isn’t to say it’s bad, but compared to cards like Mystic Confluence, this comes up short.
Confluences give you three effects to pick between, and you can pick among them to get three total effects. Verdant Confluence lets you give a creature two +1/+1 counters, get a permanent card back, and/or get you a basic land from your deck. This is actually a pretty good suite of effects, and I’d say that, if this was a three-mana sorcery that let you pick one, this would be quite good. Unfortunately, this is a six-mana sorcery, and that’s a massive overpay for at least the mana ramp part of the ability.
I think that, ultimately, Verdant Confluence is playable enough…for its faults, the ability to get back three permanents is a solid bit of value, and you can make the other abilities shine in a pinch. As a sorcery at six mana, though, this feels fairly weak overall, and it’ll take a bit to get the most out of it.
Constructed: 1.25
Casual: 3
Limited: 4 (pretty solid in Limited, honestly)
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
Green cards from this type of cycle sometimes don’t stand out as much because green is arguably the most “fair” color. This is why its increasing ability to draw cards and kill creatures in recent sets has been somewhat contentious among fans. In the case of Verdant Confluence, when you don’t control any creatures, its first mode basically can’t be chosen at all. And ramping into mana ramp is not generally a great strategy, as we’ve discussed in the past. But having said that, there are situations where it can in fact do something more spectacular than it first seems. If you’re not playing a “fair” green deck but some kind of combo deck (something like Lands in Commander), getting a bunch of cards back from your graveyard late in the game is exactly what you want. The more the game tends towards combat, the more the first mode looks like an Overrun variant. In Magic as in life, context is everything.
Constructed: 1.5 (only in Legacy and quite slow for that format)
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
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