Guardian Project – Lost Caverns of Ixalan
Date Reviewed: January 22, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 2.50
Casual: 4.00
Limited: 3.63
Multiplayer: 3.63
Commander [EDH]: 4.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Everyone talks about the multicolored, value-generating legends as being Commander plants. But when Ravnica Allegiance came out, everybody was initially too busy looking at the multicolored legends to notice that Guardian Project is just as effective there. To be fair, we also weren’t quite used to having multi-turn card-drawing engines in green, and since most Commander decks are multicolored, you often have access to such things in other colors. But this card offers the potential of near-unbounded Glimpse of Nature-style explosions, possibly with Ornithopter-style creatures and having no other nonland card types in your deck. It is, perhaps surprisingly, less universally-usable in singleton decks than it reads, but still very good.
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Turning every creature into a cantrip is quite potent, especially when the trigger condition is one that’s easily met. Even in Standard at the time, Guardian Project was by no means awful; while it’s a bit slow to hit, it pays for itself if you can untap with it (usually), and the requirement of the creature being “unique” is fair enough. Of course, a card like this screams “play me in Commander”, and it’s a solid fit for a singleton format. I’m pretty sure this will help enable an infinite loop or two with Animar and a couple friends (like Ancestral Statue), but did Animar really need any more help that way? (no)
This is a step too slow to work in deeper formats, a function of them being a bit too fast to allow a four-mana do-nothing enchantment time to work. That said, it would be strong in Standard; even if it sometimes turns off, a cantrip effect is good at greasing green’s wheels even more, and a light color demand certainly doesn’t hurt.
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.75
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
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