Exclusive Rise of the Eldrazi Preview — Disaster Radius
As the Eldrazi rise, bad things are happening. Bad things, man! The arrival of an actual Eldrazi is like an ecological catastrophe, a natural disaster. And surrounding any disaster is a radius.
All three mythic Eldrazi have been previewed already, along with some smaller minions. But even the small minions have huge casting costs. That means this card fits into the set quite nicely, offering you plenty of disasters to provide a radius for. But really, this is a throwback card, an obvious call-out to Onslaught block and all the cards that fed off of enormous casting costs.
Is Disaster Radius any good? It’s effect is certainly powerful. Destroying your opponent’s creatures and leaving yours alive is terrific, and it’s cheaper to cast than Plague Wind. Imagine this in a multiplayer game. You don’t even need to reveal something ridiculously huge like an Eldrazi to have a good chance at sweeping the board. Reveal a Malakir Bloodwitch and you’ll clear most threats away.
There is that casting cost, however. It’s pretty unwieldy. Rise of the Eldrazi is giving us honey-bunches of Eldrazi Spawn to help us generate all the colorless mana we need, but I’m not convinced that people are going to use card slots in constructed decks on spawn-generators. It’s like a three-part plan to actually cast something huge (like Disaster Radius). I’m skeptical, but agnostic — maybe someone will build a deck that abuses the hell out of the spawn.
There’s one other small problem with Disaster Plan — it’s a terrible late game topdeck. You’ve played out a bunch of creatures, or your opponent has hit you with a Mind Sludge, so your hand is empty. You’re low on life, you need something good, something to shift the momentum, give you control of the battlefield. You draw this and concede. With no creature in your hand, it’s useless. If you combine it with a creature that returns to your hand from the graveyard, then things get interesting.
In a sealed deck tournament, it could be worth putting into a deck. So many limited games are creature battles, and a big sweeper like this would simply win you the game if you pull it off. There’s still the chance of drawing it and not being able to use it, but the trade-off with the chance for a massive late-game blowout is worth it. If you’re already winning the game, it won’t really help you, but this card could lead to momentous comebacks.
Wizards can help you find a nearby Rise of the Eldrazi prerelease tournament (they’re a lot of fun, you should go). You can also pre-order Rise of the Eldrazi packs and boxes from Robot Viking sponsor TrollandToad.com.
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