Whitemane Harvest

Posted on January 21, 2014

In this experiment, we pick up our farming equipment and a couple of our favorite cats and look forward to the coming harvest.

I’ve been playing Magic for a while, and it’s not too frequent that a new set brings more than one or two cards I’m super-excited about. There are always cool cards, sure, but they’re just not necessarily up my alley. In the past couple years, though, Wizards of the Coast has really been changing this trend. Depending on how long you’ve been reading this column, you might guess the type of card I like is one that I can build a combo around. That’s true, but I also love flavorful cards, cards that generate a lot of repeatable value (my favorite card is Future Sight), and occasional oddballs (my previous favorite card was Necravolver).

Born of the Gods has shown me more than a couple cards to be excited about so far, with the headliner of that category being Karametra, God of Harvests. I liked Thassa, God of the Sea out of the original bunch, but Karametra’s effect is really the kind of thing I was hoping for out of Magic’s take on Greek gods. In Adam Styborski’s preview article for our Selesnya-like God, one of the cards he mentioned might synergize with her was Whitemane Lion. Now this is what takes an amazing, value-generating card that I might already like and turns it into a card with serious combo potential.

Imagine we control Karametra, God of Harvests. We cast it on turn five, and we’ve now played our sixth land. As long as we’re making up our own hypothetical situation, at least three of our mana sources generate white. With 2 mana, we cast Whitemane Lion, triggering Karametra. We put a Plains or Forest onto the battlefield tapped, and then our Lion resolves, triggering its ability that will force us to return a creature to our hand. At that point, we can just choose for the Lion to return itself, and we’ve cast an instant-speed, white Rampant Growth. With our 4 remaining mana, we can cast white Rampant Growth twice more.

Fleetfoot Panther is another Cat that does the same job, but for 1 more mana and an additional color requirement. Still, that gives us the kind of redundancy we like to have in combo decks. And as a sweet one-of, Dust Elemental has a similar mechanic, though it requires the return of three of our creatures. That means it’s best used to rescue our guys from a Wrath of God or the like, but as our only creature, it can act as a Whitemane Lion—Rampant Growth for

still isn’t bad when it comes with built-in buyback.

From here, we want to round out the deck with more effects that reward us for the two parts of our combo: repeatedly casting creatures and playing a lot of lands. Fortunately, playing a lot of lands can be a reward of its own. The only threat in dedicating a lot of resources to playing a lot of lands is being left with nothing left to cast with all the mana. A perfect fit here—going along with the harvest theme, conveniently enough—is Soul of the Harvest. It rewards us for having a lot of mana in that it will draw us cards, giving us more cards to cast with our mana, but it takes our white Rampant Growths, which are already instant speed, and adds the text, “Draw a card.” Of course, if we don’t have Karametra, our Cat-form Whispers of the Muse for is pretty good as well.

Champion of Lambholt can grow extremely large with repeated Whitemane Lions, and she can make all our creatures essentially unblockable. Our biggest attackers will be the Champion, Karametra, and Soul of the Harvest, and the Champion will help us reach the requisite devotion for our Harvest God. Mentor of the Meek makes the cost of drawing a bit higher than Soul of the Harvest does, but the Mentor does have the bonus of coming down on turn three instead of somewhere between turns five and seven. It doesn’t let us draw off Fleetfoot Panther or some of our other guys, but it still works with the smaller stuff.

Soul Warden and Essence Warden, Whitemane Lion’s Planar Chaos compatriot, also give us great rewards for our Cats and helps us sustain later into the game. Aura Shards gives our deck quite a bit of utility. Repeatable Disenchants are quite powerful, and artifacts and enchantments our opponents control probably won’t be sticking on the battlefield for long. Finally, for a sweet blue splash, Ephara, God of the Polis (no, not “God of the Polish” or “God of the Police”)—another allied-color Born of the Gods deity—gives us another reward for casting Cats. Whereas the other cards reward us on every cast, however, Ephara just asks that we cast a Cat on each turn. The more opponents the better, as for each opponent we have, there is another turn during which we can cast a creature and therefore draw a card. Ephara is kind of a weaker Soul of the Harvest in that regard, but she is only 4 mana, and she’s indestructible. She has just as much power, but no trample, and she’ll often not be a creature, as the W/U devotion will be harder to reach with blue just being a splash in this deck. Nonetheless, I can’t resist the urge to include new cards in new decks. Also, did I mention indestructible?

Sylvan Caryatid and Harvester Druid help us accelerate, reach devotion for Karametra, and trigger our various effects. Sylvan Caryatid is just a powerful new accelerant, and it can create any of the three colors of mana we need. Harvester Druid is an appropriately-named mana creature, beating out other acceptable options based on its title alone. I guess, if you have Noble Hierarchs lying around, you can play those instead.

Finally, one Primeval Bounty will help us end games. Every time we play a Cat (or, you know, any other creature), we make a Beast, and every time Karametra gives us a land (or, you know, we play one normally), we gain 3 life. Oh, and if we play our Aura Shards, we can make 3 +1/+1 counters. But the big deal here will be how quickly we can end the game with our repeatable Beasts.

"Whitemane Harvest"

That list is a bit tame, but it can feel quite powerful when casting Whitemane Lion over and over again for lands, cards, +1/+1 counters, Beasts, and life—oh, and maybe a Disenchant.

Realistically, going off with that deck should be enough to win in most situations. However, I can’t help but wonder, “What happens when I run out of lands in my deck?” The Johnny in me doesn’t want to be restricted by such nonsense. Thus, my urge is to find a way to not only repeatedly generate lands with Karametra, but to do so ad infinitum, until every Plains and Forest I own is on the battlefield.

I don’t think I’d build a deck around this—it’s too complex and fragile to be the primary goal of a deck. I may be missing a simpler method, but my plan would be to treat the concept as a Pocket Combo and toss the necessary pieces into a Commander deck in hopes of one day assembling the contraption and playing . . . all the lands.

Basically, here’s the plan: Control Intruder Alarm, Karametra, God of Harvests, creatures that can tap to generate at least , and Elite Arcanist with an exiled Research // Development.

Tap creatures for

and use the mana to activate Elite Arcanist’s Research // Development, casting Research. Shuffle some combination of Forests and/or Plains into your library from outside the game. Tap creatures for

and cast Whitemane Lion, triggering Karametra. Search for one of the lands that was just shuffled into the library, and put it onto the battlefield. Resolve Whitemane Lion, triggering the Lion and Intruder Alarm, return the Lion to the hand, and untap all creatures. Repeat until you have all the Forests and Plains from your collection on the battlefield—ideally, you should drop huge, heavy stacks of land cards onto the table. Toss in an Early Harvest afterward (how on-theme!), untap all those lands, and cast some huge stuff. Hydras are always nice.

Unfortunately, Elite Arcanist’s restriction of only using instants and not sorceries means we can’t use Living Wish (along with Wheel of Sun and Moon and Wild Mongrel) to cut red from our combo’s color identity. And the unfortunate interaction between Elite Arcanist and split cards means the X cost to activate him would be 7, whereas with Living Wish, it would only be 2. (When it comes to Elite Arcanist, you have to pay for both halves of a split card even though you can only pick one half to cast.) And having to pay 7 means requiring a bunch more mana creatures (or some guys like Elvish Aberration). Nonetheless, Living Wish isn’t an option. Though if you can think of a way, please let me know in the comments! (Perhaps it involves animating an artifact of some sort . . . )

If you’ve always wanted to cast Whitemane Lion over and over again, but you just weren’t sure why, or if you’ve ever wanted to put all the Plains and Forests you own into play, I hope this article had something for you.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com