Brewer's Minute: Hidden Treasures—Morningtide
Hey, everyone! It's time for another Brewer's Minute! This week marks the return of our sometimes sub-series Hidden Treasures! Last time, we talked about some of the sleepers of Lorwyn, which means this time, we're moving forward to the tribal-heavy Morningtide. What cards from Morningtide deserve a bit more credit than they get? That's our topic for today! Like usual, I don't have any deck lists for the cards we'll be talking about today, so if you have some ideas for decks or synergies that could make our Hidden Treasures of Morningtide work, make sure to let me know in the comments. Perhaps with our powers combined, we can come up with some fun and maybe even competitive lists featuring the cards from today's list!
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#6: Bramblewood Paragon
Two-mana lords are always worth mentioning, and Bramblewood Paragon is especially exciting because it's essentially an upgraded Metallic Mimic for Warriors. This means you can play eight Metallic Mimics, which means you should almost always have a copy on the battlefield on Turn 2. Plus, you can take advantage of cards like Nissa, Voice of Zendikar that put counters on all of your creatures to use Bramblewood Paragon like a weird pseudo-Overrun to trample over for lethal damage to finish the game!
#5: Kinsbaile Cavalier
I recorded this video before the Dominaria leak confirmed that Knights were returning and getting a bunch more support, which means with what we know now, Kinsbaile Cavalier might deserve to be higher up on our list. Still, even discounting Dominaria, Knights are a great sleeper tribe. Protection gives them resilience to removal, and Knight Exemplar is a super-powerful three-mana lord, giving all Knights not just +1/+1 but indestructible as well, making it safe to extend into wraths and ignoring most spot removal. What's better than a board full of indestructible Knights? A board full of double-striking indestructible Knights thanks to Kinsbaile Cavalier!
#4: Cream of the Crop
Cream of the Crop might seem like a weird inclusion on the list, but it might hold the answer to one of the age-old questions of Modern: how to make Counterbalance work in the format. The idea is simple: you play Cream of the Crop along with a bunch of flash creatures like Vendilion Clique, Snapcaster Mage, and Elder Deep-Fiend; then, whenever your opponent casts a spell, you flash something in to set the top cards of your library to the right converted mana cost to counter it with Counterbalance! While the idea seems fun and like it has the potential to be powerful, I've never gotten the mixture quite right, so if you have some ideas, make sure to let me know in the comments!
#3: Preeminent Captain
Cheating things into play for free is an inherently powerful ability, since it allows you to cheat on mana. While Preeminent Captain comes with some major restrictions (you need lots of Soldiers to make it work), there are some six-mana Solders like Captain of the Watch, Foundry Champion, and Darien, King of Kjeldor that would be pretty scary coming down for free as early as Turn 3!
#2: Maralen of the Mornsong
This one might be cheating a bit because we had a Fishbowl Thursday featuring Maralen of the Mornsong a while ago, but the fact remains that the Elf Wizard is one of the more unique and potentially powerful cards in Modern. Probably the easiest way to break Maralen of the Mornsong is to keep your opponent from searching their deck with cards like Leonin Arbiter and Shadow of Doubt, which you can keep tutoring up with the help of Maralen of the Mornsong. This basically locks your opponent out of ever drawing a card while also giving you the perfect card for any situation. While finding the right deck to abuse Maralen will take some testing and work, the end result could be pretty powerful.
#1: Countryside Crusher
Countryside Crusher occasionally shows up in fair-ish decks as a reasonable three-drop, especially if they happen to be playing Life from the Loam to get lands back from the graveyard, but there are a bunch of other sweet things you can do with Countryside Crusher. For example, you can play a deck that's 48 lands, four Countryside Crushers, four Flings, and four Treasure Hunts, potentially letting you Fling a lethal Countryside Crusher at your opponent's face (after it mills a bunch of lands and finds you a Fling). Another possibility is using Countryside Crusher to mill a bunch of lands for Splendid Reclamation and then reanimating them to get the Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle kill. I'm sure there are a bunch of other possibilities as well, and these endless possibilities bring Countryside Crusher to the top of our Morningtide Hidden Treasures list!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. If you've got some ideas on how to abuse these cards (or on any other Hidden Treasures from Morningtide) make sure to let me know in the comments! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
