Wilderness Reclamation – Ravnica MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Believe it or not, there are a couple of things this card actually can’t do. Because of the rules about when your mana pool empties, its ability to double your mana is limited to either when its trigger is already on the stack – Nexus of Fate, anyone? – or in a more conceptual way over two or more turns. But even the slower version is extremely good. Every color has instants, and green also has color-fixing that lets you get all those cool instants into your deck. Every color also has creatures and enchantments with activated abilities that cost mana, and you can unleash all of those twice as often with Wilderness Reclamation in play. In the right deck, it basically gives every card the mana-refund mechanic from Urza’s Saga (cf. cards like Rewind). So there are a couple of things this card can’t do, but not that many!

Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 5/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
EDH/Commander: 4/5

Despite being a green card, Wilderness Reclamation is more at home among blue decks. Sounds about right.

The idea with this is that you can use it to represent answers on your opponent’s turn without going completely inert on your turn. Or be ready to unleash Nexus of Fate on your opponent’s end step and start taking all of the turns (why was that card an Instant, again?). Even without the format-warping box topper promo, Wilderness Reclamation offers a lot of subtle power in being able to still have answers while setting up threats.

It’s definitely a card that doesn’t seem overpowered, but having all the answers is a good place to be. This is going to be a Standard staple for all of Ravnica Allegiance‘s run through the format, thanks to actually doing something when it drops and doing so affordably (unless it gets instantly nuked).

Constructed: 4
Casual: 4
Limited: 2.25
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander: 3.75