Nylea’s Intervention – Theros Beyond Death MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

I’m pretty sure one of the creatures Nylea is unleashing here is an armasaur (ankylosaur), like we saw back on Ixalan. I suppose if anybody could bring such a beast to Theros, it would be her! As far as mechanics go, I don’t find this Intervention to be the most must-run of the cycle. It can be nice to get a bunch of lands, basic or non, of your choice, but if you have to get them out with normal land plays, it’ll take a few turns to get the maximum benefit. There is, of course, the famous Seismic Assault to interact with in casual play.

As for its other mode, it’s really quite dependent on your metagame and what your opponents are bringing. It’s a one-sided Wrath of God against Bird tribal or Dragon tribal, and a very efficient one at that. There are decks that will be able to use Nylea’s Intervention profitably, though it may not end up as a true staple of any particular format.

Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5

The intervention cycle is interesting enough, though I feel like Nylea’s Intervention is one that might be harder to build and play around around than the others. Tutoring a large number of lands feels a bit weak, particularly in the late game and when they only go to your hand, though this could be used to fetch specific lands from your deck in a pinch if you set X equal to 1 or 2. The second mode is strong against flying creatures, though green rarely struggles with those as much as it used to (given the prevalence of reach and fight these days). That said, nuking a board of flying token creatures is sometimes invaluable, and scaling off of twice what you pay into X puts it above the likes of Hurricane.

Ultimately, it’s okay. In most decks, it’s going to be primarily used for that first mode, with the second mode as a good emergency out if things start going sideways against avian perversions, but that first mode just feels underwhelming overall. It probably plays better than it looks, but green did get the short end of the Intervention stick, both in having weak effects and sorcery-speed effectiveness.

Constructed: 3 (playable, but probably filler)
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 2.5 (beats Dream Trawler, but not a whole lot else good to say about it)
Multiplayer: 3
Commander: 3.5 (redundancy is good, especially one that doubles as a board wipe)

Phat
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Magic
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Hello Everyone and welcome back to Pojo’s card of the day!

Today we’re taking a look at Nylea’s Intervention, one of a five color cycle that happens to land in green. Like the other Interventions it is a very modal spell, unlike the other ones it doesn’t seem to have as many uses for both abilities though.

The first one is a bombshell for big mana ramp formats like Commander or Multiplayer, and the fact that it doesn’t only hit basic lands, but X land cards means you can find your duals, your utility lands, and even neat little lands like Library of Alexandria!

In Standard it won’t see much play because usually when you’re at 5 mana you’re done ramping. It might see play in Pioneer where there’s a few stronger lands and Golos Ramp decks have shown that they do indeed enjoy those bonus mana lands like Castle Gahrebrig or Shrine of Forsaken Gods. 

In Booster Draft I don’t think this spell would do much outside of just ‘pseudo-drawing’ cards by chunking lands into your hand and there’s a lot more green cards that I would want over this. 

Constructed 2/5 – Sylvan Scrying is still better, the ability to hit fliers is negligible on this card. 

Limited 1/5 – This should be a late pick rare draft to maybe fix your mana in green.

Multiplayer / Commander 3/5 – A lot better here if you have a ton of utility lands you want to snag into your hand.

Cube 1/5 – Not worth playing here, there are so many better options.

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