Ikoria: Lair Of Behemoths Set Review: Colorless And Lands

Today marks the conclusion of this weeklong exploration into Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths as we discuss the set’s colorless cards, including lands, after covering white, blue, black, red, green, and multicolor over the past six days.

Sleeper Dart may seem like a Limited-only card, but plenty of two-cost artifacts that draw a card have seen play and Yorion, Sky Nomad doesn’t exactly make this seem less likely.

Still, Sleeper Dart isn’t so obviously useful that it has an immediate home. Obviously, buying yourself a little time is useful, but another possible part of the equation is that, unlike most of these two-cost cantrip artifacts, this one can sacrifice itself every turn.

If Lurrus of the Dream-Den is your companion, you can potentially use the Sleeper Dart as a card draw engine, while also locking a creature down indefinitely.

We’d have to be playing a pretty extreme “flash matters” deck, as Springjaw Trap’s rate is much worse than we have commonly available.

As a zero-mana cantrip, Springjaw Trap becomes quite good. The question is whether we can afford it all the times we don’t have cards like Cunning Nightbonder and Slitherwisp tying it all together.

Bonders’ Enclave

This type of card usually ends up as a one-of in some big green ramp or ramp-adjacent decks, giving them an extra way to use their lands to their advantage if things stall out a bit.

Cards like Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath and Hydroid Krasis are very solid ways to make a one-of Bonders’ Enclave work in a long game. Even if your opponent is going to kill it in response, you can still draw a card at least once if you’ve got the mana.

In Modern, Bonders’ Enclave is a little slow, but it’s not out of the question to imagine it playing a minor role in some kind of Eldrazi aggro deck, particularly if you’ve got Expedition Map to help find it when it’d be especially useful.

Likewise, Knight of the Reliquary might want a card draw engine you can search up that happens to not enter the battlefield tapped when you just draw it naturally.

You shouldn’t really rule a new Pilgrim’s Eye out, even if vigilance is so much worse than flying.

Who knows, though? When Zendikar comes back, maybe there’ll be Eldrazi, and maybe it’ll suddenly be a major upside that this is a colorless creature, despite not being an artifact.

Hexproof is pretty good, and a +1/+1 counter is okay (though we’re probably not trying to play a 4/4 for three, I don’t think). Most of these counters, though, really make it seem like Crystalline Giant has to be on the battlefield for at least two turns before we’re breaking even, and we’ve still got to make up for the lack of “material” while we were waiting as well as the decreased reliability. It is at least a little interesting that Crystalline Giant is an artifact creature, though, and maybe it can be combined with mutate to make some pretty sweet plays.

Mysterious Egg

Mysterious Egg is very loud about making you want to go all-in on mutate. It’s the ideal start to every ideal mutate draw, and if you’re willing to put all your cards in one basket, it’s definitely the type of card that can really help put the hyper-linear deck together.

I keep getting pulled towards these other hyperlinear enablers, but I’m not at all sure the Mysterious Egg really wants this much company for cheap non-mutate cards.

There are only a few creatures that mutate for two, and it’s not like they’re super-optimized for decks that are all-in on mutating. I still just want to figure out what Vadrok wants from us, as far as outstanding mutate questions go. Are we supposed to be casting spells like Ancestral Visions and Crashing Footfalls? Is that it?

I consider Mysterious Egg alongside Essence Symbiote to help build out some kind of mutate/counters hybrid deck; however, there really aren’t great counters cards to go along with them, and the nature of mutate as a mechanic doesn’t really lend itself to the geometrically scaling bonuses of some counters-based strategies.

For instance, Jiang Yanggu turns each creature with a counter into a source of acceleration and Steel Overseer awards counters proportionate to how many artifact creatures you have. If you stack all your creatures into one mutant, a lot of the natural +1/+1 counter synergy cads won’t be very effective.

The Ozolith

Of course, counters decks did receive a major windfall in the form of The Ozolith. It’s the kind of card that should go in decks that would play Hardened Scales.

Its power level is relatively high, considering this is just a one-mana artifact. The catch is, of course, that it’s legendary, making it risky to play too many of. Still, it’s a great addition to actual Hardened Scales decks right away.

Despite the ambiguous wording, you do get the best of both worlds when you combine The Ozolith with Arcbound Ravager. “Its counters” is speaking to the attributes and qualities of the possessions, not the quality of being this specific possession.

Practically speaking, this means you do get both the +1/+1 counters from modular and +1/+1 counters are put on The Ozolith. As for Standard, there’s no shortage of cards that involve counters, that’s for sure.

While there are some solid options in white, as well as some options for Izzet, heavy green has the most appeal to me, with the most solid support for counters as a theme.

Starting with mono-green, there are kind of some interesting elements with just how many big, efficient bodies we end up with. Still, we’re not that fast for a deck without much interaction.

I tried Simic Ascendancy, but it just doesn’t impact the battlefield much and games of Standard get decided a lot more quickly than this card is really capable of.

Hydroid Krasis is definitely legit, I’ll give you that much. The real combo, however, is the use of Fertilid alongside Evolution Sage.

Separately, they’re about as modest of three-drops as you can get. Together, however, they form a mondo-combo! Every two mana you spend, you can move a counter off the Fertilid to get a land, which then causes the Sage to proliferate, giving Fertilid its counter back (plus amplifying any other counters cards you may have).

I wonder if we should be moving in much harder on this combination. Fertilid is even an Elemental, so we can also “go off” with Omnath, Locus of the Roil.

Once again, every land is a +1/+1 counter for everybody, letting the cycle continue anew. Temur also offers some pretty crazy dreams for counters decks on account of Song of Creation, particularly when combined with Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter and Rhythm of the Wild.

Yeah, that’s a lot to have all rolling, but you don’t actually need it to come together to really explode. If you’ve got even a little to work with, Song of Creation can just draw you so many cards that everything else comes together quickly.

Why are Jiang Yanggu and Rhythm so explosive in conjunction with Song?

These three X-spell creatures are very strong with Song anyway, since you can spend zero to draw two cards. However, if you’ve got Rhythm going, they still enter the battlefield as 1/1s instead of 0/0s. If you find a second Rhythm, now you can actually use the other riot for haste. Jiang Yanggu then turns them all into Moxes (that happen to draw two cards when you cast them). Just make sure you eventually attack for lethal before decking yourself.

I’ve been thinking about Song of Creation more, and I wonder if there’s something to be said for going all the way in.

In Pioneer, we’ve got more zeros than we could possibly want. We should be able to play Song of Creation and then just keep chaining zeros until we draw our whole library (assuming we play roughly half zeros).

Since Song of Creation gives us a land drop, we do get one mana to start with when we actually go to win. If we cast a one-cost legend, we might be able to use it to power up our Mox Ambers. We only need to produce two mana to pay for the Thassa’s Oracle at the end (whether blue from an Emry Mox or green from an Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter washed with Rosethorn Acolyte).

This engine takes up so much of our deck, it’s hard to actually have room for anything else, which doesn’t give us more flexibility for games we don’t draw Song.

One option is to try to build around Sram, Senior Edificer as a secondary card draw engine, since we can play sixteen zero-cost Equipment if we want. The mana isn’t trivial, however, at least not in Pioneer.

We’re probably just supposed to get a bit less “pure” and fuse this strategy with some kind of Jeskai Ascendancy deck, or even just an “Emry for value” deck.

Anyway, back to the colorless cards…

The Crystals

The Crystals are just not priced anywhere close to Constructed play for use straight-up. 

As for combos, we can start by first identifying their strength, their advantage, what it is about them that is “special” compared to everything else (because it’s certainly not their rate). For the Crystals, their “special” property is that they’re the only artifacts with cycling in Standard.

As mentioned above, you could try combining them with Emry, since Emry makes it advantageous to end up with artifacts in your graveyard and Crystals let you do that more reliably. Still, we’re just not getting much for going to all this trouble. We’re spending two mana cycling these things, then three more to cast them out of the graveyard? And that’s assuming Emry lives? Compare this proposition with Parcelbeast:

Like with Emry, we can draw a card every turn and potentially get a little ahead on mana. Parcelbeast, however, asks very little of you and gives you material in a far more useful form (to say nothing of being more reliable than cycling away Crystals).

Dance of the Manse is a little better, as we’re actually talking about a payoff that could scale pretty hard. Still, there are just too many better options for this to be a serious draw to me. I’ll keep it in mind, but for now, I’m saving the Crystals for Fluctuator combo decks.

The Triomes

The Triomes, however, are totally automatic immediate staples. The original tri-lands were staples, and these even have a solid cycling ability plus the advantage of counting as all three basic types, which does stuff like untaps our Castles.

It’s also going to be really interesting when the shocklands eventually rotate out and we see the return of Glacial Fortress (or whatever multicolor lands they go with that care about land types, because that’s totally their style).

They’re totally going to reprint fetchlands again in Zendikar, aren’t they? Pioneer is already a success with the other five fetchlands banned, so it’d be no problem to ban these five right out the gate. These five would give a powerful new context to the wedge color combinations of Ikoria since they each span two wedges instead of just one, like we saw around Khans of Tarkir. With shocklands set to rotate out, they’re really setting up beautifully an eventual format where people could build a manabase like:

• 4 Raugrin Triome
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 4 Arid Mesa
• 4 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Island
• 2 Plains
• 4 Mountain

Of course, who knows? They’re surely going to put some kind of creature-lands in Zendikar. I kind of hope they’re monocolored this time. It’s been a while. Would be kind of a refreshing change to go back that way. 

Anyway, here are my Top 5s from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, without question the most game-changing set in recent memory.

Top 5 White Cards

1. Luminous Broodmoth
2. Sanctuary Lockdown
3. Flourishing Fox
4. Lavabrink Venturer
5. Mythos of Snapdax

Honorable Mention: Drannith Magistrate

Top 5 Blue Cards

1. Sea-Dasher Octopus
2. Shark Typhoon
3. Neutralize
4. Boon of the Wish-Giver
5. Voracious Greatshark

Honorable Mention: Mythos of Illuna

Top 5 Black Cards

1. Heartless Act
2. Whisper Squad
3. Mythos of Nethroi
4. Serrated Scorpion
5. Call of the Death-Dweller 

Honorable Mention: Extinction Event

Top 5 Red Cards

1. Blitz of the Thunder-Raptor
2. Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast
3. Fire Prophecy
4. Drannith Stinger
5. Yidaro, Wandering Monster

Honorable Mention: Mythos of Vadrok

Top 5 Green Cards

1. Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate
2. Gemrazer
3. Kogla, the Titan Ape
4. Humble Naturalist
5. Mythos of Brokkos

Honorable Mention: Wilt

Top 5 Multicolored Cards

1. Slitherwisp
2. Narset of the Ancient Way
3. Sprite Dragon
4. Fiend Artisan
5. Parcelbeast

Honorable Mention: Winota, Joiner of Forces

Top 5 Companions

1. Lurrus of the Dream-Den
2. Yorion, Sky Nomad
3. Keruga, the Macrosage
4. Gyruda, Doom of Depths
5. Obosh, the Preypiercer

Honorable Mention (insofar as companions can be honorable): Umori, the Collector