Ugin, the Ineffable – MTG War of the Spark Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Considering how Ugin was one of the leaders of the first war against the Eldrazi so long ago, the fact that he works well with them is rather ironic. Six mana is a lot by normal standards, but it’s still cheaper than many of the colorless cards whose costs you’d want to reduce. It is expensive enough to require acceleration to come out in a timely manner, which does make me think that it might be easier to just use that acceleration to play the Eldrazi or whatever they are. Still, having him in play could you cast colorless spells similar in cost to him and still do other things in the same turn.

Even if you just use him as a six-cost card who can destroy a colored permanent, that’s an ability that a lot of decks lack – a mono-green or mono-blue deck might get enough of an edge from such an unusual (for them) ability that it can tip a game or match in its favor.

Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
EDH/Commander: 4/5

Ugin 2.0 is less of an unstoppable nuke, compared to his previous pass, but he’s still quite good! The “worst-case scenario” for Ugin is that he’s a six-mana kill spell for a permanent, which is pretty solid. The best-case is that Ugin is effectively a source of card advantage with his pseudo-manifest ability on his +1. You get a temporary 2/2 that dies to become a card in your hand, which is solid value from a blocker (or attacker). Between the two abilities and a bit of nice cost reduction (while there aren’t a ton of colorless cards in War of the Spark, most artifacts will benefit from this), Ugin has a lot to offer for an enterprising deck of artifacts or tentacles, and he’s quite a nice piece overall.

Constructed: 4
Casual: 4
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 4