Null Elemental Blast – Modern Horizons III
Date Reviewed: June 3, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 3.0
Limited: 3.0
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.0
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
If you’ve played with Elemental Blasts before, you’ll know that they’re rather odd cards to have in a deck. There are times when you’ll have them in your hand and feel really, really strong – presumably you sided them in against a deck that has the relevant color identities, and you’ll notice that there are almost no counterspells so universal and so effective (Annul and Dispel are the only significant ones that are comparable). You’ll certainly notice that no other type of card has ever destroyed any permanent, with only one restriction, for just one mana. Yet there are other times when your opponent will happen to have drawn all their things that don’t match the Elemental Blast’s target, and you’ll have one in your hand and have to resist the urge to discard it to a looting effect. It’s just the nature of the card category, unfortunately, and this is why they’re sideboard cards in everything but the most unusual and extreme circumstances. Mostly, anyway – Commander is a notably multicolor-heavy format and like a colorless artifact, Null Elemental Blat can go in any deck. Anywhere else, you’ll have to weigh your matchups in a slightly different way than when you’re using older Elemental Blasts, because you can target any multicolored card but not any monocolored card that shares one of its colors, like you can with those other cards. Multicolored cards are often important to gameplans, so that might well be worth it.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 3
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4
A nice throwback to the Elemental Blasts of yesteryear, Null Elemental Blast is one of those cards that’s quite interesting to decks that can support it. A cheap counterspell is always promising, and this also can just pop things that are already on board! Multicolored is also a fair enough limitation as far as what you can hit, and it sort of matches the flavor of Eldrazi being weird.
That said, this is a narrow spell. There will be match-ups where this has no targets to hit, and the colorless mana demand is one that makes it deceptively hard to splash. Unless you’re specifically building with colorless casting in mind, there may well be times this sits aimlessly in your hand. I definitely think it’s a potent part of a toolbox for a tribe that could use a couple more nudges in places, and there are also plenty of artifact-focused decks that will quite like having an out to some troublesome things. But this definitely is not a spell worth blindly slamming, and it feels like a quintessential sideboard piece.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 3
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4 (multicolor tends to be the name of the game for most decks here)
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