Plus: 52 Surveil Lands in Standard?

The Daily Upkeep: Everything you need to know about what's going on in Magic: the Gathering... in 3 minutes or less 🔥

Black Lotus Meets Krark-Clan Ironworks...?

Radiant Lotus feels like the lovechild of two broken cards: Black Lotus and Krark-Clan Ironworks. Cards like this are always the most uncertain to speculate on, as we've had our fair share of dud Lotuses in the past:

One thing that Radiant Lotus has over both of these is that it doesn't enter tapped. This means that, with proper setup, you can play it, throw a bunch of junk into it, and end up substantially ahead on mana. From there going wining the game with it is a matter of:

• Having a way to untap Radiant Lotus, like Hidden Strings.
• Being able to funnel that mana into ways to draw more fodder artifacts.
• Including some kind of win condition that you can dump practically infinite mana into, such as a Fireball effect.

And yet on the other hand, this is a card requires proper setup, meaning you certainly can't just throw it into any deck. Matt Nass' infamous Krark-Clan Ironworks deck is a good precursor for what a Radiant Lotus deck might look like:

It remains to seen how it will impact Standard, Pioneer, or even Modern. One thing's for certain though: Radiant Lotus is stone unplayable in Limited! Keep a close eye on it after the set releases, as it will likely either be busted or a bust.

Deck of the Day: Insidious Roots in Pioneer

Today's deck of the day 5-0'd a Standard League yesterday, and is built around a powerful enchantment from Murders at Karlov Manor, Insidious Roots. Roots is an engine card that can potentially generate a ton of bodies, power, and mana for just 2 mana itself. Getting it do this though requires a lot of building around; if creature cards aren't consistently leaving your graveyard, Insidious Roots won't do much.

This build of Insidious Roots actually uses a bunch of Standard-legal cards, with a couple of powerful exceptions. Stitcher's Supplier and Priest of Forgotten Gods are the main ones, with the Supplier being an exceptional self mill creature. Priest of Forgotten Gods, meanwhile, is another engine card that works great with all of the deck's disposable self mill creatures.

The basic gameplan of the deck can be described as follows:

• Mill yourself with cards like Rubblebelt Maverick, Stitcher's Supplier, Cache Grab, and Tyvar, Jubliant Brawler.
• Find Insidious Roots with cards like Rubblebelt Maverick and Cache Grab, and then play it.
• Exile or return cards from your graveyard (the whole deck is full of ways to do this) to get increasingly large Plant tokens turn after turn.

Most of the cards in the maindeck are there to accomplish one or more of these three things, with Fatal Push and Haywire Mite being the only exceptions. As for the sideboard games, the deck has some powerful reactive options:

• Additional Haywire Mites help fight artifact and enchantment centric decks, such as 5c Enigmatic Incarnation. It's also a good check to Rest in Peace, which will often be sideboarded against you.
• A playset of Thoughtseize is there to attack combo/control decks, often replacing Fatal Push.
• A playset of Anoint with Affliction can exile dangerous cheap creatures like Heartfire Hero.
• Damping Sphere and Glistening Deluge hate on Lotus Field combo and white weenie decks, specifically.

Overall, Insidious Roots is a powerful but narrow card that requires a lot of support. It can be a bit inconsistent though, and struggles heavily in sideboarded games against graveyard hate. Regardless, if you like synergistic creature decks and enchantments that look like draft fodder, give this one a try!

Full list here

Scry 3 - The Top 3 News Tidbits

• SaffronOlive took a deranged brew by PT Champion Simon Nielsen for a test run yesterday. Featuring a whopping 52 surveil lands, it's a terrible combo deck that you won't want to miss!​
• Aetherdrift spoiler season is close to finished, with some recent highlights including vanilla legendary creatures (from Muraganda), a rare discard payoff, and a new Legendary Elvish Piper. Don't miss out on any spoilers!​
• WotC issued a correction two days ago concerning the Special Guest art for Skysovereign, Consul Flagship. The artist credit incorrectly lists Kogado Studio (in all languages). The correct credit is Imiri Sakabashira, so this will be updated on their digital platforms.

Fast Finance

Looking for a wise investment? We've partnered up with MTGStocks to bring you the latest MTG finance data! Here are today's movers:

• ​Reserved List card Unfulfilled Desires has seen a massive spike from $1.74 to $21.55. Ironically, destruction of the Reserved List itself may be the magic communities greatest unfulfilled desire...
• ​Wrath of the Skies took a fair hit yesterday, with a price drop from $3.58 to $2.08. Despite being good against Mox Opal decks in theory, in practice Grinding Station may be too much for it to handle.

Combo of the Day: Zacama, Primal Calamity + Temur Sabretooth for Many Infinites

Another day, another sweet combo. You'll need a lot of mana to pull this one off, but only two cards in particular: Zacama, Primal Calamity and Temur Sabertooth.

1. To go off, you'll need both creatures on the battlefield, and enough lands to produce at least 8RGGW.
2. Float as much mana as you can, adding at least 8RGGW.
3. Activate Temur Sabertooth (6RGW floating), returning Zacama from the battlefield to your hand.
4. Cast the Elder Dinosaur by paying 6RGW (one mana floating of whatever color you chose).
5. Repeat steps 2-5 until you have as much mana as you want.

The nifty thing about Zacama is that it provides it's own infinite combo piece! To go off with all the mana you are generating, all you have to do is dump it into any of Zacama's three powerful abilities. That means you'll have infinite life, infinite Naturalizes, and infinite damage to creatures. It should be elementary to win from there!

The Memes

We all know you're really here just for the memes. Well, here they are 🤦‍♂️

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