Awakened Amalgam – MTG Card of the Day

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

This is a very interesting sort of ability – and I do mean that in a good way. It is actually getting sort of close to the kind of ability you might see in an Un-set, just because one of the staples of those sets involves looking at things that are unusual to look at. (Compare the version of Knight of the Kitchen Sink that has protection from two-word names.) It also kind of fulfills another of my constant refrains, which is more cards for singleton formats. In such settings, it’s entirely plausible to have every land in your deck have a different name from every other – sometimes even in a two-color deck – and this guy will get out of control pretty fast. Without evasive abilities, he can be dealt with more easily than a lot of other hyper-efficient cards, but your opponent will need to start finding blockers fast.

Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 2/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5

King Of
Hearts

This card’s ability feels like it came from Unstable. In a perfect world you’ll be getting a 4/4 on turn 4. A bit underwhelming but nothing wrong with that. The nice thing about this card is that it grows as the game goes on. An 8/8 for 4 mana sounds a lot better.  Since it’s an artifact it can go into any deck, but I theorize the two best decks are polar opposites. Using a colorless Commander gives you access to a plethora of powerful lands to choose from. Playing a 5 color decks means you always can play this card despite what colors you have access to as well the benefit of being able to play every land ever printed, although fetch lands make it a bit moot. I think this card was designed to play well with the flip lands. Maybe if it had another ability that triggered when lands transformed it would be more blunt. 

Constructed: 2
Limited: 1
Casual: 3
Multiplayer: 2
Commander (EDH): 3

I’ll be honest: Awakened Amalgam is far worse than it looks.

Let’s start with the “ideal” case: this is a 4/4 for 4, with no combat abilities, on turn 4, with the potential to scale into a much bigger threat as the game goes on. The problem is that the case for this is rarely “ideal”, regardless of format.

• In Limited, nonbasic lands are pretty uncommon, and you’re unlikely to end up with more than 1 or 2 overall. If you assume a 3-color deck, at most, the best-case scenario for Awakened Amalgam is a 5/5, which comes up short late-game against any of the tribes.
• In Standard…the dominant deck pre-Rivals is Temur Energy, which runs around nine unique lands in the mainboard of the deck, a number of those as one-ofs. A four-mana 9/9 sounds nice, but you’re unlikely to get there; it’s apt to be only a 5/5 or less, given the preponderance of one- and two-of lands the deck runs alongside the Aether Hub and fast-land nucleus.
• In Modern and other formats…yeah, no. Decks tend to run fairly sleek and streamlined bases with a lot of shocks. As an example, the Naya Aggro deck I run in Modern has eight unique lands…three of them are fetch lands, and so this is only ever going to cap out at 5/5 without anything special going on. Most decks are in this ballpark.

It’s a clever trap, but a trap all the same. Give it a wide berth.

Constructed: 1.25
Casual: 1.5
Limited: 1.25
Multiplayer: 1.25
Commander: 1.75