Rainbow Gate has been denounced by many duelists as a weakened version of Dimension Gate.  While they are partially correct, it still serves a few special purposes.  Read on to see what this bad boy can do.

 

Rainbow Gate

 

Cost: 2

Civilization: Nature

Type: Spell

Rules Text:

·         Search your deck. You may take a multicolored creature from your deck, show that creature to your opponent, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your deck.

 

This card is certainly similar to Dimension Gate in that it allows you to search for a creature and put it in your hand.  Unfortunately it does come with restrictions.  Rainbow gate only allows us to search for a multicolored creature as opposed to Dimension Gate, which searches for any creature.  The other restriction is that Rainbow Gate is not a shield trigger.  As a result, Rainbow Gate has not been given a second glance and has been dismissed as being useless.

 

So how can we make it work?  Let’s first talk about everyone’s favorite multi-colored creature, Bombazar, which just-so happens to be Fire and Nature.  Bombazar decks are still very popular but the card itself is still very difficult to get and still costs a lot of money.  The beautiful thing about Rainbow gate is that duelists who posess only 1 Bombazar now have an easier time pulling it out at the right time.  It lowers the price tag on making a Bombazar deck and allows our younger players (or those who don’t have the cash to shell out) to play like the pros.

 

Now for the true reason why this card was created…  Rainbow Gate opens up enormous possibilities for duelists who focus on wielding the power of multi-civilization cards.  When you think about it, the biggest inconvenience for decks that rely heavily on multi-civilization is the fact that a lot of the cards will go into the mana zone tapped.  To remedy this, when you add 4 copies of Rainbow Gate to a deck, it will indeed represent 4 copies of ANY multi-civ creature.  This means that you will not have to run 4 copies of each creature and it also means that at a very low cost you will be able to search for the right creature at the right time.  Being the cheapest of all search cards makes Rainbow Gate stand out and thus creates a new style of utility decks.

 

The Good:  Very inexpensive and even though it has limitations, it still allows you to search for some of the best creatures in the game.

 

The Bad:  I guess the limitations are understandable but I wish it was a shield trigger.

 

The Ugly:  People are too involved with other archetypes, such as Bombazar and control, to ever get to enjoy a card like this.

 

Constructed Rating: 4/5 –  This card remedies the pain of having too many multi-civilization cards in a deck.  On top of that you get to control what’s in your hand and which move to make next.

 

Limited Rating: 1/5 – Rainbow Gate might be difficult to use in limited because the Blastosplosion set does not offer multi-civilization creatures.

 

Please feel free to post your comments, questions, and/or objections on the Message Board and I’ll be more than happy to respond.  Happy dueling!

- DRY 1337