With the first official FNM at Bel Air Games under our belt, it’s time to once again look at cards that you might want to try and keep around in your trade binder for events! That’s right folks, it’s time for CardWatch! This week, a card shown to be an upcoming contender in M15, and something that has consistently increased in price since it was released.
Our card this week is Genesis Hydra, one of the new green rares released in M15. This card has seen some pretty impressive standard play already, and I predict it being a heavy player in the upcoming standard season.
Genesis Hydra has a lot going for it right now, which basically boils down to 3 points: It’s well costed, it’s a scalable body, and it’s easily an automatic 2-for-1. I’ll go into these points in more depth.
Point 1: Genesis Hydra is pretty well costed for our new format. Right now, green is a strong color – Polukranos, Nissa, and the amount of support green got in Theros and M15 make that assured. In addition, Nykthos allows decks to reach ridiculous amounts of mana early on, and Genesis Hydra adds 2 to your devotion to green, making it work even better!
In addition to this, Genesis Hydra has an X in its cost, which means that it has a very scalable body. While early on it’s not that great – who wants to pay 3 mana for a 1/1? – it can get very scary as a topdeck late game, when you have plenty of mana to spare.
Finally, I’m going to quickly go into a concept called “card advantage”. In a game like Magic where cards can remove other cards and your board state matters to you specifically, it’s easy to figure out that, as a very general rule, whoever has the more cards over the course of the game will win. In the basic theory of card advantage, “cards” is used more to mean active presence in the game. For instance, if you have 4 creatures and I have 1, playing a card like Supreme Verdict will end with me ahead – I’ve spent 2 cards (my Supreme Verdict and my creature) to get rid of 4 of yours.
Genesis Hydra is often a 2-for-1, which means I’ve spent one card from my hand (Genesis Hydra itself) and gotten 2 cards worth of board presence out of it (Genesis Hydra and whatever I get with its ability). As an additional bonus, Genesis Hydra’s ability triggers “on cast”, which means that even if your opponent counters Genesis Hydra through a card like Nullify, you will still get the extra card off of Genesis Hydra. That means that spending mana on Genesis Hydra is very good to do – you’ll almost always get value out of it… except if you whiff on its ability!
These things combined make it clear that Genesis Hydra is an impressive card all by itself, and the fact that it saw play in the 9th place deck of a recent SCG Open make it clear that this card is going places. It’s still pretty cheap, so now is the time to pick it up or trade for it. Have a great day, Magic players, and I hope to see you all at Sealed League tonight at Bel Air Games. Who knows? You might even open up a Genesis Hydra of your own!
Note on CardWatch:
CardWatch is a weekly column wherein our local Magic judge, Conner Morrison, talks about which cards to keep your eye on. This week: Genesis Hydra! Cardwatch and all content are TM & Copyright Bel Air Games and Conner Morrison.
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