Eluge, the Shoreless Sea – Bloomburrow
Date Reviewed: Sept. 4, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 4.13
Multiplayer: 3.88
Commander [EDH]: 4.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
This kind of card name is something that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in connection with Runo Stromkirk’s Lovecraftian sea cult from the recent Innistrad sets. Eluge’s game text is not quite as inscrutable and thought-defying as that type of lore, but does have some subtlety to it; I suspect it might well end up being mainly about building to the cost-reduction ability. Those little words “in addition to its other types” mean you can’t really use it as mana-denial, like with Spreading Seas, and it’s not clear that it quite has enough to displace existing islandwalk-enabling cards. In return, though, you get something which is quite rare on cost-reduction cards: potentially reducing the amount of colored mana you need, rather than just generic. Combined with the fact that said reduction is not restricted to your own turn, I expect a lot of people to get ambushed by zero-mana Counterspells at casual tables for a while.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Talk about making everything proper moist. Eluge, the Shoreless Sea is an interesting sort of mono-blue enabler, thanks to empowering both your spells and your lands; at base, Eluge guarantees a discount of 1 mana (generic or blue) on all your spells. You can give flood counters to other players’ lands, though this is unlikely to directly benefit you…unless you have anti-Island tech or islandwalk, like with Merfolk. It’s not a phenomenal body, but it does scale aggressively as a game goes on. I do think the color-intensive requirement and slowness both make Eluge a bit of a harder sell in deeper formats (and even Standard), but I think there’s room for some fun if you’re enterprising enough.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4
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