This guy's main use is to trigger landfall
effects at instant speed, when you normally
couldn't. It is fortunate that doing so also
ramps your mana, but unlike more commonly used
ramp like Rampant Growth or Everflowing Chalice,
this one is limited to working only if you have
extra lands in your hand. Granted, the more
extra lands you draw, the mroe it can work, but
if you're drawing so much land, chances are your
deck is failing to give you any spells to cast
with all this mana.
Add to that the fact that it's a 1/1 artifact
creature (yes, it is indeed an artifact, check
the errata) with a tap ability. That makes it
one of the easiest types of cards in the game to
kill, and it needs to survive a full turn to be
able to tap.
This is a funny little card, as it does a
pretty good impression of Mother of Runes or
Tormod's Crypt in tandem with other Worldwake
cards. That's not why people might be paying
double-digit figures for it someday, though:
misprints are often a huge hit among the
collector crowd, and while it's not on the scale
of Summer Magic's blue Hurricane, I imagine
everyone would want a piece of the card that
inadvertently started the Eldrazi craze six
months early.
Magic The Gathering Card of The Day: Walking
Atlas
Welcome back readers today’s card of the day is
Walking Atlas a creature that can tap and allow
you to put a land card from your directly onto
the battlefield. The ability to drop any land
onto the battlefield can’t be underestimate,
however there are more effective ways of
accomplishing this task in every format except
limited and possible casual. In standard,
extended and eternal this card won’t see play at
all I’m willing to bet on it. In casual and
multiplayer and limited it allows you to drop an
extra land triggering landfall and allowing you
to put yourself ahead on the mana curve. Overall
it’s a powerful card in limited and possible
landfall decks but it is far down on the ladder
of playable cards. I also believe this card was
purposely printed without its artifact subtype
to preview colorless spells in Eldrazi!
Today's card of the day is Walking Atlas which
is a two mana colorless creature (artifact in
the errata) that can help accelerate any deck in
the early stages of the game, but in a fairly
limited scenario. There has to be four
mana sources available to make use of the effect
even once, two to play, then two lands in hand
on the following turn. For decks that may
be returning lands to their hand or drawing
several lands a turn this can be an excellent
support creature for a relatively low cost.
Another interesting aspect of this card is the
tap ability is a may effect which means it can
be tapped even if you don't have a land in your
hand. The applications for this aren't
very common, but it can prevent a forced attack
or effects that rely on it being untapped by
being tapped in response.
For Limited the Landfall mechanic and ease of
playing this in any deck make Walking Atlas a
card worth drafting fairly early. In
Sealed there is almost no deck that can't
benefit from a two mana colorless creature and
in Booster this is very strong in a two color
deck. Blue and Green both have some
support for adding lands to hand and each
Zendikon is a potential target as well. As
a common it is likely to be seen and should be
played when possible.
