[New Card Discussion] Worm Harvest

[Illissius]

Given this is probably the single most promising new card from Eventide, I have seen surprisingly little discussion of it.

Worm Harvest
/ / /
Sorcery
Put a 1/1 black and green Worm creature token into play for each land card in your graveyard.
Retrace

I'm not sure how much of the obvious I need to state, but you can recur it with lands, recur your lands with Loam, and repeatedly make anywhere from a decent to a pretty stupid number of Worm tokens, and then attack your opponent with them, causing him or her to die.

So the question is, where does it see play?
Does Aggro Loam play it? Does it become a different deck as a result? (given that recurring a 5-mana sorcery to make tokens which die to Devastating Dreams is a fairly different strategy from beating face with gargantuan creatures which cost 2-3 mana)
Does Eternal Garden play a copy for Intuition? (My guess is yes.)
Does 43lands play it?
Is there an entirely new (and good) deck out there built specifically to abuse it?

I mean, I know I want to make a deck which starts out:

4 Exploration
4 Worm Harvest
4 Life from the Loam
4 Barren Moor
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Cabal Coffers

And then makes an absolutely ludicrously mind-fucking obscene amount of Worm tokens once it gets going. Which I have a feeling is just a highly dangerous and shiny cool thing, but damn if it isn't a cool thing. (EDIT - Gaea's Cradle might need to be in there somewhere too, now that I think of it.)

Finally, someone has to work out a way to play it in the same deck as Armageddon and call it Worms Armageddon, or this world is not worth living in.

[Wallace]

While I really like this card, isn't 5 mana a little high for Legacy?

Finally, someone has to work out a way to play it in the same deck as Armageddon and call it Worms Armageddon, or this world is not worth living in.

I believe a better name would be B/G Tremors



This could be the token art pic and the flavor text should read:

"I wish I had a bigger gun, preferably something belt fed!"

[Illissius]

While I really like this card, isn't 5 mana a little high for Legacy?

Not as a rule. People play Siege-Gang Commander, Decree of Justice, and occasionally things like Morphling and Gigapede; and Loam decks are very good at producing lots of mana.

[Aggro_zombies]

I should hit up the Pirate Bay for Worms Armageddon. That game was fun.

On a more on-topic note...it seems like Engineered Explosives and Deed are both rather bad for you, and five mana (three of it colored) is a little pricey. That said, I could maybe see this as being an alternative to Countryside Crusher in black-splashing 43Lands builds, or at least a Wish target if Crusher gets Extirpated.

[Illissius]

EE or Deed kills one wave, sure; then you discard a land and make another. This card would not be worth discussing if it did not have Retrace.

That said, maybe I really am not sufficiently taking into account the fact of its five mana cost, and getting carried away with how powerful and difficult to deal with it is once it gets going. Dunno. Unlike some of the other Retrace cards, this one is still capable of being a huge threat even after Loam has been Extirpated, requiring a second one to get rid of it.

[Wallace]

EE or Deed kills one wave, sure; then you discard a land and make another. This card would not be worth discussing if it did not have Retrace.

That said, maybe I really am not sufficiently taking into account the fact of its five mana cost, and getting carried away with how powerful and difficult to deal with it is once it gets going. Dunno.

I agree that EE and Deed are just a minor annoyance, a bigger problem would be E. Plague. The CC of 5 on this card will be one of the only things that will prevent it from being an amazing card. That being said I think it may have a place somewhere in Legacy, 43lands or a new arc type built around this card could break it. We will see....

[Aggro_zombies]

That said, maybe I really am not sufficiently taking into account the fact of its five mana cost, and getting carried away with how powerful and difficult to deal with it is once it gets going. Dunno.

Well, see, the thing is, the card is redundancy at best. The best place for a card like this is in a deck that can dump 6+ lands into its graveyard, and quickly, while ramping up to five mana. The only decks that can really do that are Lands! variants, with 43Land.dec seeing the most play. Since that deck is primarily green in any of its various builds, getting to isn't going to be too hard, but won't happen (realistically speaking) until turn 2.5 or so. Dropping this from your opening hand because of that one enchantment from Exodus isn't a problem because of Retrace. The problems crop up when you consider that a) the card isn't that good without an active Life from the Loam, b) an active Life from the Loam in 43Lands is game over, and c) an army of Worm tokens does not play well with Tabernacle. Personally, I would rather keep Tabernacle and just beat the other guy shitless with man lands than try to cut my creature control abilities to make a lot of Worms.

That said, it would probably be a good sideboard card against control, where Tabernacle is subpar at best and the ability to make an endless stream of men is fairly strong.

tl;dr - Sideboard material.

[Sek'Kuar]

@ Wallace: Ask Yawg07 do a commission for you.

@ Illissius: Wouldn't Dakmor Salvage be ideal, since you can keep discarding the same card and it feeds other dredge (LftL)?

[Nihil Credo]

Wow, I've always read the card as counting lands in play, rather than in the graveyard: that would have made it awesome for 43 Lands and barely OK for Aggro Loam, which pitches its lands to Mox, Assault, Dreams, etc.

Instead, it's the reverse: 43 Lands tends to keep its graveyard as clean as possible, by putting all its stuff in play via Exploration/Manabond, whereas Aggro Loam builds up a hefty yard quite fast.

[Aggro_zombies]

Instead, it's the reverse: 43 Lands tends to keep its graveyard as clean as possible, by putting all its stuff in play via Exploration/Manabond, whereas Aggro Loam builds up a hefty yard quite fast.

This is true early on, yes, but after a certain point you start dredging with Life from the Loam and the yard fills up pretty quickly. 43Lands doesn't need more than five or six duals/basics in play, so unless it's fighting Wasteland or something it can afford to keep extra ones in the yard and retrieve lands that actually matter. This also doesn't count fetchlands, which aren't useful after a certain point.

[Illissius]

That's true; but any Loam deck build a sizeable graveyard quickly just by repeatedly dredging Loam with a cycling land, if it wants to.

EDIT - Beaten by zombies.

[Wallace]

@ Wallace: Ask Yawg07 do a commission for you.

ROAR!

[Aggro_zombies]

That's true; but any Loam deck build a sizeable graveyard quickly just by repeatedly dredging Loam with a cycling land, if it wants to.

Yes, but Aggro Loam has much better options than the Worminator available to it, since it can actually run creatures like Tarmogoyf. Also, I'm pretty sure Seismic Assault is better than this card like 70% of the time.

Because 43Lands is built to take advantage of having as many lands as possible, and because it runs Tabernacle, it has to get by with Factories and Treetop Villages, and Nantuko Monasteries if you splash white. Compared to Tarmogoyf, those are pretty lame. However, the presence of Tabernacle is a big reason why you don't want to run Worminator, at least in the main.

I don't know, I just think the card may be over-hyped. It's hard to evaluate it in the absence of some decklists.

[Illissius]

As far as I know, most Lands lists only run one copy of Tabernacle. I don't think that's a huge conflict even if you do keep both in the same deck. If you have a giant army of Worms in play, don't play the Tabernacle; if you already have a Tabernacle in play, I guess you'll have to suck it up and beat them down with Factories instead (that's if you don't want to sacrifice it to Chasm or Wasteland it). Anyways, a constantly growing army of Worms somewhat obviates the need for Tabernacle.

Worm Harvest is slower than Tarmogoyf et al, but what it has going for it over those cards is that it's one hell of a lot harder to deal with. They basically need to have an Extirpate or something along those lines. If your opponent has a Worm Harvest going and you don't have an Extirpate (or Plague or Moat), whatever you do, you are eventually going to die.

[Nihil Credo]

I'm concerned about the curve issue in Aggro Loam as well. Five mana is a lot. I was thinking that it'd be at least a no-brainer for the Wishboard, but that would be for the blue control matchup, and they rightfully always counter Wish anyway.
Also, the AL sideboard is incredibly tight, whereas the maindeck has as many as seven "floating" slots (those where I run Chalice+EE), but, as I said, a 5CC does not look like a great candidate for the spot.

Maybe the deck could be rebuilt to be more midrange and less of a land destruction/bombs hybrid? For a time Extended had a Pernicious Deed twist on Loam that performed quite well: we could maybe use that as a basis and work on a Rock-Loam approach. Deed has only appareny dissynergy with Harvest, because you can rebuild immadiately.


Also:

[Aggro_zombies]

Maybe the deck could be rebuilt to be more midrange and less of a land destruction/bombs hybrid? For a time Extended had a Pernicious Deed twist on Loam that performed quite well: we could maybe use that as a basis and work on a Rock-Loam approach. Deed has only appareny dissynergy with Harvest, because you can rebuild immadiately.

I was starting to think of this too. I'll throw together a rough list after I get back from eating dinner. Stay tuned.

[Wallace]

Sorry, is that better, is there anything else I can fix for you?

[Aggro_zombies]

How about something like this?

4 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Barren Moor

4 Mox Diamond

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Eternal Witness

4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Burning Wish
3 Destructive Flow
2 Life from the Loam
2 Worm Harvest

SB:
1 Worm Harvest
1 Life from the Loam
1 Discard spell with Retrace
1 Hull Breach
11 Others

Crude, yes, but I came up with it in just a few minutes. The deck could probably squeeze in some Magus of the Moon if it veers more towards red. I figured Destructive Flow should be fairly strong given the relative flimsiness of most of the mana bases in the format. You could always drop it for Deed. Also, I want to work Wasteland in there somewhere.

So, now that we have a starting point...thoughts?

EDIT: Oh, Wallace, the worm should be hybrid:

[Noman Peopled]

I don't know if the card's worth maindecking in Loam or 43Land. But with Wish (and the usual amount of fetchlands in Legacy) I could see this see play all over the place (er, well, in decks with land recursion). A 6/6 Wurms is not as impressive as a bunch of 1/1s if you have nothing else on the table and can turn the table quickly; it's also much better on defense against weenie crowds than a Terravore at that point.

I particularly like it as a win condition in BG midrange and BG control - didn't think of that one. Not sure if it'll work, but I like it. I'm picking up one or two copies, that's for sure.

[georgjorge]

As I said before, I think it's best chance is with Intuition. The deck called TarmoTog (in the ETF) is a kinda Aggro deck that runs a single Gigapede for Intuition, and it is good there. Harvest would usually be even better there (especially against Goblins, Goyf Sligh and anything with small creatures), if it weren't for the fact that it can't get the Wonder you get from Intuition into the yard. But running both one Gigapede and one Harvest could turn out fine.