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Today, the official Dungeons and Dragons Twitch channel gave us a preview of two new cards from the upcoming set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms! Let’s take a look:
Tasha’s Hideous Laughter
- Card Name: Tasha’s Hideous Laughter
- Mana Cost: {1}{U}{U}
- Card Type: Sorcery
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Text:
Each opponent exiles cards from the top of their library until that player has exiled cards with total mana value 20 or more.
First up we have Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, a mill-based sorcery that has the potential to be very powerful. In older formats like Modern and Legacy, there are many decks that run very few cards with high mana value, including some decks- such as Legacy Lands- that only have a total mana value of around 25 in the entire deck. There’s no question that this card has powerful implications, especially because the cards go directly to exile instead of to the graveyard where they can still be accessed. In Standard, it’s hard to say exactly where and if this card will have a home, but there’s no doubt that Tasha’s Hideous Laughter has the potential to exile a LOT of cards when it’s cast. It’s tempting to think of Dimir Rogues as an obvious shell for this card, but it’s not without issue: Rogues has many cards such as Into the Story that depend on the opponent having cards in their graveyard rather than in exile. However, Tasha’s Hideous Laughter does threaten to shrink the opponent’s deck considerably, especially against aggro and other hyper-efficient decks, so it may be worth giving it a try in order to close out the game quickly. Many players have tried to build mono blue mill as a standalone deck using cards like Maddening Cacophony and Ruin Crab, so maybe this card will help to push that archetype closer to where it needs to be.
Flumph
- Card Name: Flumph
- Mana Cost: {1}{W}
- Card Type: Creature – Jellyfish
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Text: Defender, flying
Whenever Flumph is dealt damage, you and target opponent each draw a card. - Power/Toughness: 0/4
This next card is definitely an oddball. Flumph is a 0/4 creature with Defender and Flying, meaning it cannot attack but it can block other creatures with flying. More interesting is the static ability on the card: “Whenever Flumph is dealt damage, you and target opponent each draw a card.” Wizards of the Coast has been experimenting with different ways that they can give white spells card draw without breaking their place in the color pie. We have seen effects similar to this as recently as Strixhaven with cards like Secret Rendezvous– allowing the caster to draw cards at the expense of an opponent drawing cards as well. Effects like this are often played in the Commander format where you have multiple opponents and the caster can choose which opponent will get to draw, but they typically haven’t seen much play in Standard. Symmetrical draw effects like the one found on Flumph are not often desirable in competitive formats unless they can be broken or otherwise manipulated in the caster’s favor. We have seen some symmetrical draw effects see play in Standard recently in the form of Rankle, Master of Pranks and Stormfist Crusader, but in both of those cases the draw effect comes with damage attached to it and is attached to a good aggressive body. The idea is to get your opponent dead quickly enough that the advantage they get from drawing is negligible. Flumph will be a challenge to build around in Standard because although white is a strong color for aggressive decks, the nature of this card is strictly defensive because of the defender ability.
We’ll be continuing to cover ongoing spoilers for Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, so stay tuned and be sure to check out our full spoilers page in the meantime.
