Double Your Enchantment Abilities with Weaver of Harmony! | Exclusive Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Preview
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is almost here, and the set is looking awesome so far! Today, thanks to Wizards hooking us up, we've got a spicy preview to show off for all of you today. If you know me, you'll know that one of my favorite mechanics in Magic is doubling things (see: Panharmonicon), and today's card does just that. Meet our new enchantment-y Snake Druid, Weaver of Harmony!
Weaver of Harmony comes in two different but somewhat related parts. Most obviously, it's a two-mana 2/2 lord for enchantment creatures. Second, it's an twist on cards like Strionic Resonator (hitting activated abilities along with trigger abilities) or maybe a Tawnos, Urza's Apprentice for enchantments, allowing us to tap it to copy an enchantment's trigger for just a single mana!
Enchantment Creature Lord
Let's get the "enchantment creature lord" thing out of the way first. The good news is that two-mana lords traditionally are pretty playable, and this is doubly true of two-mana lords with upside, like Weaver of Harmony. Even before getting a bunch of new enchantment creatures in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty itself, there are more than enough enchantment creatures to build a deck with Weaver of Harmony providing support. The bad news is that most the enchantment creatures that see play in various formats see play because they have powerful abilities (like Sythis, Harvest's Hand drawing cards, Sanctum Weaver making mana, or Heliod, Sun-Crowned allowing for combos), rather than because they are strong attackers. And if your goal is to use your enchantment creatures as synergy pieces rather than attackers, then having a lord on the battlefield doesn't really offer that much value.
Could there be some sort of enchantment-creature aggro deck using Weaver of Harmony as a lord? Anything is possible, especially once we get a look at the rest of Kamigawa, but it's hard for me to imagine an enchantment-creature beatdown deck being on par with other aggro decks like Mono-White or Mono-Green in Standard. And while there's probably a fun casual deck in older formats featuring Weaver of Harmony with things like Sythis, Harvest's Hand, Destiny Spinner, Eidolon of Countless Battles, and friends, this seems more like kitchen table fun than a competitive plan. It's also possible to turn normal enchantments into creatures with cards like Opalescence and Starfield of Nyx, although if you manage to animate a big board of enchantments, I'm not sure you need an extra +1/+1 from Weaver of Harmony to close out the game.
Copying Triggers
All this is to say, while the enchantment-creature-lord text is nice, the real power of Weaver of Harmony is its second ability: being able to copy an activated or triggered ability from an enchantment. We've seen cards with similar abilities, like Lithoform Engine and Strionic Resonator, used as combo pieces in the past, and Weaver of Harmony probably has this potential as well, although being limited to only copying abilities from enchantments making things a bit more challenging.
Standard
In Standard, discounting a combo cropping up from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty itself, Weaver of Harmony mostly seems like a value card. It works really well with sagas. Being able to copy the card-draw trigger from Showdown of the Skalds, the Angel trigger from Firja's Retribution, or the destroy triggers from Waking the Trolls or Binding the Old Gods for just a single mana seems pretty solid. Doubling blinking with Teleportation Circle and making twice as many tokens with Felidar Retreat or Hallowed Haunting also seem sweet, as does making twice as many creatures with Necroduality or Reflections of Littjara. If you want to go really deep, you can even try to put two things into play each turn with the backside of Esika, God of the Tree, Prismatic Bridge! Basically, Weaver of Harmony can do a lot of really cool things in Standard, all attached to a cheap body with upside, which seems powerful, although I don't think there's a way to go infinite with the two-drop.
Older Formats
The combo potential of Weaver of Harmony becomes clearer once you get back to older formats like Modern or Commander. Perhaps the easiest way to go infinite with it is with the help of enchantments that untap creatures. Take Jeskai Ascendancy, for example. When you cast a non-creature spell, it creates a trigger that untaps all of your creatures and gives them +1/+1 until end of turn. If you can play Weaver of Harmony and a mana dork of some kind like Sylvan Caryatid or Birds of Paradise, you can cast a single non-creature spell to trigger Jeskai Ascendancy and then make infinitely large creatures by using Weaver of Harmony to copy the untap trigger again and again (with the mana dork giving us the one mana we need to activate Weaver of Harmony). If we have two mana dorks (or a mana dork that makes more than one mana), this same process will give us infinite mana as well.
In Commander, you can do something similar with Aggravated Assault. With Weaver of Harmony and a mana dork (or several), you can activate Aggravated Assault to get an extra combat step and untap all of your creatures, and then Weaver of Harmony can copy that trigger for just one mana. When the copy of the trigger resolves, it will untap Weaver of Harmony, so we can copy the original trigger over and over again (using the mana dork to make the one mana we need to activate Weaver), giving us infinite combat steps and potentially infinite mana. It's also possible to do the same thing with the trigger from Awakening (which untaps all creatures and lands each upkeep), although you'd need a way to win at instant speed, and it would be a bit risky since you'd also be untapping all of your opponents' lands and creatures an infinite number of times.
Maybe the most hilarious (and jankiest) Weaver of Harmony kill involves Aria of Flame and Tainted Remedy. When Aria of Flame enters the battlefield, it make an opponent gain 10 life, which we can double up to 20 life with Weaver of Harmony. Normally, making the opponent gain 20 life would be a bad thing. But if we have Tainted Remedy on the battlefield, our opponent will end up losing 20 life rather than gaining 20 life, killing them on the spot. With a good draw, we could even do this as soon as Turn 4, by playing Weaver of Harmony on Turn 2 and Tainted Remedy on Turn 3, which would give us just enough mana to play Aria of Flame and spend one to copy its trigger on Turn 4. Is this plan good? Almost certainly not, although it would be funny.
Playing Weaver Fairly
While we've mostly focused on doing huge, explosive combo-y things with Weaver of Harmony's ability to copy enchantment triggers, this isn't necessary in reality. If you think about a typical Enchantress deck in Commander, like Sythis, Harvest's Hand or Tuvasa the Sunlit, Weaver of Harmony is probably worth it just as a value card. Paying one mana to copy the trigger of Sythis, Enchantress's Presence, or Eidolon of Blossoms will draw you an extra card. With Sigil of the Empty Throne, you'll be making a 4/4 flier for one mana. Cards like Oblivion Ring or Banishing Light now exile two permanents instead of just one. Luminarch Ascension can add two quest counters a turn rather than one. Sterling Grove can tutor two enchantments. Karametra, God of Harvests double-ramps. Starfield of Nyx reanimates two enchantments each turn. Oh yeah, and Urza's Saga is an enchantment for some reason, so Weaver of Harmony can allow you to make twice as many Constructs and tutor up twice as many Sol Rings and Mana Crypts! If you think about a typical enchantment deck, it probably plays enough cards that synergize with Weaver of Harmony that you'll want the Snake Druid in your 99 even if you aren't really building around it; plus, you get the upside of maybe working a backdoor combo finish into your deck.
And that's what makes Weaver of Harmony an exciting card to me. It's good enough to play as a fair value-card in various enchantment decks, but it's also unique enough that you can go all-in building around its ability with various janky combos and synergies if you want to. While we'll have to wait to see the rest of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty to really be able to judge its potential in Standard, at the very least, it will be a solid addition to Commander decks and a fun, janky build-around in formats like Modern, Pioneer, and Historic!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Thanks again to Wizards for hooking us up with a sweet preview card! So, what do you think about Weaver of Harmony? What other combos exist? Can enchantment-creature tribal work? Let us know in the comments! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
