What's Better Than a Tutor? Two Tutors on One Card! | Exclusive Tarkir: Dragonstorm Previews
Last fall, Green Sun's Zenith was unbanned in Modern after being illegal for more than a decade. Meanwhile, Finale of Devastation shows up in some Modern combo decks and has been a staple in the not-that-distant past. Chord of Calling has been a staple in creature-combo decks and even Invasion of Ikoria has shown up in formats like Modern alongside Vampire Hexmage. While while all these cards are great, they have a big downside: they only tutor up a single creature. What if there were a similar card that could tutor twice, rather than just once? Well now, thanks to Tarkir: Dragonstorm, there is! Take a look at Nature's Rhythm!
If Nature's Rhythm seems familiar, that's because it's super similar to Finale of Devastation, Invasion of Ikoria, Chord of Calling and friends. The primary difference is it's upside where the new harmonize mechanic lets us flash Nature's Rhythm back from our graveyard. Sure, the harmonize cost is a lot of green mana, although the fact that we can tap a creature to reduce its generic X cost helps make the overall cost more reasonable.
So, just how good is Nature's Rhythm? It really depends on the format. Once you get back to Pioneer or Modern, Nature's Rhythm is competing directly with cards like Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling and Finale of Devastation, which means you are going to need a specific reason to play it over the other powerful options.
Standard, though, is different. The only card we have really competing with it is Invasion of Ikoria and since flipping battles isn't typically worth it, Nature's Rhythm feels like a major upgrade thanks to harmonize. We have decks in Standard that both make a ton of mana and have powerful creatures to tutor up. An obvious potential home for Nature's Rhythm is some sort of Overlord Ramp–style deck where Overlord of the Hauntwoods offers so much mana that paying a two-mana tax to tutor up the right creature in the right situation isn't a big deal. Not only does this card offer extra copies of your best creature (like Zur, Eternal Schemer), but once you add Nature's Rhythm to your deck, adding some powerful one-ofs also becomes much more appealing. A single Atraxa, Grand Unifier is a bit awkward sometimes since your odds of drawing it aren't high, but a single Atraxa in a deck with four copies of Nature's Rhythm is amazing.
Another use of a card like Nature's Rhythm is adding redundancy to combos. Maybe you are playing Otters and really need to find Enduring Vitality and Valley Floodcaller, and you likely win the game if you do. Nature's Rhythm solves your problem. Sure, there is a two-mana tax, and paying five for an Enduring Vitality or Valley Floodcaller might sound bad. But if you are going to win the game as a result, it's probably still worth the trouble.
It's also worth mentioning that we're in three-year Standard now, which might make the combo-supporting aspects of Nature's Rhythm more important. Traditionally, the Standard card pool has been so small that combos rarely develop, especially competitive ones. But with 19 sets in Standard moving forward, the odds of finding two creatures that happen to do something game-ending if you get them both on the battlefield together go up significantly.
Assembling combos is the ability that theoretically could make Nature's Rhythm a player in Modern or Pioneer despite the competition, similar to Invasion of Ikoria, which ismoistly a worst Green Sun's Zenith, but in the right deck it shines by tutor up Vampire Hexmage to fip it. While it takes a lot of green mana, it's possible that you can cast Nature's Rhythm to tutor out a combo piece and then tap that combo piece to help pay the harmonize costs on Nature's Rhythm to snag your second combo piece and win the game. The biggest problem here is that this costs at least six green mana; plus, you need to pay the cost of at least one of the creatures you are tutoring up. So, even a combo with two two-drops, like Vizier of Remedies and Devoted Druid, is going to cost a minimum of eight mana, which is probably too much for most decks.
Playing Nature's Rhythm in a deck like Mono-Green Devotion that can make oodles of mana solves this problem, although I'm not sure if it's better than just playing and flashing back Storm the Festival for value. But imagine a Mono-Green Devotion deck with a creature-combo finish. That seems like the perfect shell for Nature's Rhythm.
As far as Commander goes, I think that Nature's Rhythm is a very playable card but will probably be a backup to Finale of Devastation since, in Commander, it's pretty easy for a green deck to make enough mana that Finale not only tutors up a creature but also Craterhoof Behemoths up the team for lethal. That said, tutors are incredibly strong in Commander, and tutors that put permanents directly into play are even better. So, you really can't go wrong throwing Nature's Rhythm into basically any green deck with a bunch of creatures.
Tutors naturally play really well with the 100-card singleton nature of the Commander format. Nature's Rhythm gives you a card that can snag a mana dork when you need to ramp, an Eternal Witness when you need some recursion, a Bane of Progress when you need some removal, and a Craterhoof Behemoth when you are ready to win. And it's even better thanks to harmonize since you can do things like grab a ramp piece to make the mana you need for your finisher and then use that mana to harmonize Nature's Rhythm and find the finisher. Basically, if you are a green deck that makes lots of mana and plays lots of creatures, it's going to be super difficult for Nature's Rhythm to ever really be bad.
The other huge upside of Nature's Rhythm in Commander is that it's likely to be way more accessible than either Finale of Devastation or Green Sun's Zenith, which are $25 and $45, respectively. Being printed at rare is huge here. This, combined with the fact that there's a lot of competition for Nature's Rhythm's slot in eternal 60-card formats, should help keep its price down, which means that the floor of Nature's Rhythm is likely as a very strong budget-conscious replacement for something like Finale of Devastation.
All in all, I really like Nature's Rhythm. While it isn't reinventing the wheel by any stretch, similar cards from the past have been very solid. As I mentioned in the intro, some have even been banned! While I don't expect that outcome from Nature's Rhythm, I do think the card can see play in Standard and Commander for sure, and possibly in very specific decks that can take advantage of the harmonize flashback mode in other formats.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Thanks again to Wizards for hooking us up with the free preview, and as always, you can reach me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com or @SaffronOlive on Twitter or Bluesky.
