Root Maze is a very interesting card with a good
opportunity to be useful in constructed decks.
Root Maze lets aggressive green decks make
slower decks, particularly control decks, EVEN
SLOWER. In aggressive green decks, Root Maze is
most likely to come from the sideboard, but
aggro/control decks with green mana bases may
choose to play Root Maze in the main deck.
Unfortunately, Root Maze is not very useful in
booster draft or sealed deck play, where it is
more difficult to gain an advantage from slowing
down the play of lands and artifacts.
Artifacts and lands come into play tapped? What
good is that? It'll stop Affinity, sure, but
these days? Well, most artifacts that get played
today are Signets, Prismatic Lens, and Mind
Stone in another few weeks. So this puts a
damper on mana. But it's Green. Green doesn't
get its mana from artifacts, it gets it from
creatures. So this puts a damper on everyone's
mana but yours? Well, except for the fact that
creatures have summoning sickness. But it does
help slow things down all around, except maybe
for you and your Elves. Someone'll find a way to
break it I'm sure.
Constructed- 2.5
Casual- 2.5
Limited- 1.5
Aethereal
Friday - Root
Maze
Mainly useful for the fact that it's cheap and
it slows your opponent down. It does slow your
mana down too, but in the correct deck (aggro)
it will hurt your opponent much more than it
will hurt you. Outside of Stompy-type decks I'm
not sure where this fits. I do think it will see
more play in Extended than in Standard, as
Extended has a bigger field of cards to work
with in building a deck that uses this. Time
will tell if it sees play, but basically this is
better than Kismet and Frozen Aether everywhere
except casual and in Stasis decks.
In limited, you can't abuse the symmetry of
this, so no.
Don't know what to say about this card. Right
now I see this card totally messing over
solarflare decks which run signets. It slows
them down an extra turn. Since it is green you
can be fine with your elves and birds to accel.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 2
Limited: 2
David Fanany
Player since
1995
Root Maze
Is this the disruptive effect green usually
lacks? Well, it's no Plow Under, and it's not
even Tangle Wire, but it is cheaper than both of
those, and it slows down control decks pretty
nicely. Not only do Signets come into play
tapped, they can't even be played on the second
turn the way control decks like to play them. It
slows down its controller's lands too, but maybe
you'll be playing cards like Treetop Village
that don't care whether or not they come into
play tapped. Root Maze is a solid card that I
expect to see play in Standard events. Now, all
green needs is a real one-drop creature . . .
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 2/5
Arcane
Root Maze
Constructed: This card has the potential to work
in an aggro build, potentially adding to the G/W
decks already inspired by the TPF block
constructed, by keeping your opponent from
mounting a defense too early. The problem is
that this card doesn’t do anything to win the
game on its own, and will affect you just as
much ass your opponent so you have to really
prepared to work around the turn stumbles on
mana. If you want to run this I wouldn’t see any
reason not to run the tapped lands like Llanowar
reborn or New Benalia, etc. since they come into
play tapped already anyway. Doesn’t affect
creatures like the better Kismet or Frozen
Aether and there aren’t that many problem
artifacts that require tapping that I can
remember.
Casual/Multi: It’s not going to do much more
than aggravate people as it puts them a turn
behind where they want to be because they can’t
use their mana the turn they play it. And a card
that doesn’t win you the game and annoys people
is not really a winner in the casual meta. I’m
not actually sure yet as to what deck this card
is actually supposed to be gold in, if any
exists. If you know of one, sound off on the
boards or let me know.
Limited: Don’t run it. With only 23-24 spots for
cards in your deck, they all have to do
something that helps you win. This is going to
stay in the sideboard.
Constructed: 1.5
Casual: 1
Limited: 1
The Missing
Linc
-Balding
for just over 5 years
-Playing MTG for just over 10
Root Maze
I have not ever seen this card played in
constructed but it has not been available in a
card pool for extended or standard for a while.
While green can accelerate mana considerably
without artifacts, other colors are not so
lucky. This could very well be used as a
sideboard card for aggro decks who are looking
for just a little more time to beat the opponent
down. I am not really sure where to stand on
this one, but I think it holds potential.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 3
Limited: 1
PsychoAnime
#1
Magic Noob in Canada since 2002
I think it's pretty hard to break this effect
effectively
enough to see play. The only way I can think of
is to combine this with
Seedborn Muse to untap your lands, but that's a
lot of work just to
keep your opponent's land tapped thev turn they
come in.
