Enter the God-Eternals

Sorcery

Enter the God-Eternals deals 4 damage to target creature and you gain life equal to the damage dealt this way. Target player puts the top four cards of their library into their graveyard. Amass 4. (Put four +1/+1 counters on an Army you control. If you don't control one, create a 0/0 black Zombie Army creature token first.)

Tokens

• Zombie Army 0/0 B

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

Hybrow on Tilting at Windmills - Zellix EDH (mill)

1 year ago

Made_Compleat, thanks for the suggestion.. Yes, I held off on getting him because of the price point, and I wasnt sure if i was going to keep this deck. but its super fun to play, so will hang on to it..

Thinking would be a good replacement for Enter the God-Eternals. It has been underwhelming in past games.

TheOfficialCreator on Favorite pulls you've had

1 year ago

My top three packs had to have been these:

1. Pulling Murderous Rider, Nyx Lotus, Liliana, Waker of the Dead, and Bonders' Enclave in quick succession. I had just picked up one of each pack from their respective sets to increase my card pool of recent cards. Granted, these obviously aren't the best cards, but they were all pretty good cards from their home sets and I was happy to see them. They still all have happy homes in some of my best decks.

2. Pulling a borderless Pathway, a Zendikar Resurgent, and a foil Skyclave Relic from the same ZNR pack.

3. My favorite pack of all time (and my second most expensive I believe, after the one that gave me Finale of Devastation) was an Ixalan booster pack I bought on a whim to play a silly two-pack draft with my little brother. I ended up pulling a Vraska, Relic Seeker AND a foil Search for Azcanta  ^Flip. By far the most jaw-dropping moment I've ever had in MTG.

Though an honorable mention would have to be the time I pulled an Enter the God-Eternals in draft. I was super hyped about that card from all the Draft YouTube videos I had watched, and I was thrilled to show my brother that I had gotten one of the sickest cards in the set.

TheOfficialCreator on Card Analysis #1 - Dreadhorde …

1 year ago

Hello, everyone!

I thought I would try my hand at creating an article series centering around the beauty of different card designs, as each card truly is unique in its own way, and I wanted to make my appreciation of that into a tangible form so that everyone could experience it.

A general outline of how this article series will go is this: a basic introduction (similar to what you’re reading now), cost versus effect, the flavor of the card, how the card interacts with its limited environment, cards that are similar to it and a short little blurb on what makes them different, a custom card inspired by the analyzed card and a short explanation of the process used to create it, the legacy of the card, and finally, a conclusion to round it all out.

That being said, let’s begin!

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The card of today’s analysis is Dreadhorde Invasion, a card I chose to kick off the series with not only because War of the Spark is my favorite set, but also because it will give us a good platform to walk through the steps of this article series.

Dreadhorde Invasion is an oft-overlooked card that provides its user with a Zombie Army (a mechanic introduced and incredibly localized to War of the Spark, excluding a few exceptions such as Lazotep Chancellor) at the cost of a single life each turn. Obviously this adds up quickly, and the Army that is produced is rather clunky, as it is easier to remove (a la Fading Hope), non-evasive, and rather small even in its beginning stages. For {1}{B} it gives you a 1/1 creature on turn 3. That’s not a great payoff, especially for more advanced formats.

This is where the second clause comes in. If your Army can make it to six power, then Dreadhorde Invasion rewards you handsomely with an added lifelink, allowing you to gain back all that lost life and quickly breaking symmetry with your life versus your opponents. It’s not incredibly cost-effective (heck, a Forced Adaptation is more cost-effective in general), but it’s very fun to play with and can provide a lot more when juxtaposed with the rest of the game. But we’ll get into that later.

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The flavor of Dreadhorde Invasion is perhaps my favorite part of the card. The Eternals are probably one of the most unique MTG villains (I mean, come on, they’re blue metal zombies that can cross between worlds and steal planeswalker sparks), and definitely one of my personal favorites. The idea of Dreadhorde Invasion is that Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is executing his plan to become Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God, invading the plane of Ravnica with his army of Eternals empowered by The Elderspell in order to steal the sparks of the planeswalkers, trapped there by The Immortal Sun and invited there by the Interplanar Beacon. The invasion is eventually quelled by a joint effort by Liliana, Dreadhorde General, Gideon Blackblade, Ugin, the Ineffable, God-Eternal Oketra, and God-Eternal Bontu, with the defeat of Bolas wrapped up in the brilliant card Despark. Dreadhorde Invasion more than anything flavor-wise represents the whole of War of the Spark, perhaps better than any other individual card in the set (except maybe Enter the God-Eternals). And that is why I love it so much; it is a testament to my favorite set of all time.

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As far as Dreadhorde Invasion’s performance in Limited goes, I must say that it has quite an unitive feel to how it operates in multiple deck strategies, similar to how it unites the flavor of the set. It has the keyword amass on it, which is the new ability introduced in the set, and which synergizes well with proliferate. Zombie Armies themselves receive gracious tribal support in the form of Gleaming Overseer, Eternal Skylord, Widespread Brutality, and the like. Beyond this fairly obvious synergy, however, there are many more options for how Dreadhorde Invasion can function in this set. For example, the creation of a creature every turn lends itself very well to sacrifice strategies revolving around Spark Reaper, Ahn-Crop Invader, and Spark Harvest, or even Liliana, Dreadhorde General and God-Eternal Bontu. In addition, the lifelink that can be attained on later turns goes well with Ajani's Pridemate and fits into a subtheme of life gain that the set has.

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Dreadhorde Invasion-style effects are somewhat rare, but there is precedence for their existence. The most obvious example is Bitterblossom, an enchantment well-known for its splashes in Modern and which creates small flying threats every turn at the cost of some life. However, there is also Ophiomancer and Endless Ranks of the Dead, or more recently Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia. The thing that sets Dreadhorde Invasion apart from these other cards is its unique combination of losing life and gaining life alongside its ability to make a token larger versus just creating a new token.

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Here is a custom card that I made that was inspired by Dreadhorde Invasion.

The process I went through to design this card went something like this.

1) Look at Dreadhorde Invasion and think about what the card is wanting you to do. What's the general theme of the card?

2) Build a general shell around the idea of losing life to gain life, pulling in inspiration from cards like Bloodghast.

3) Adding a tribal element to make it feel like a Dreadhorde card.

4) Adding a fitting name. "Vowmage" gives a feel of some kind of sacrifice to fufill an obligation, especially to a being like Bolas.

5) Adding flavor text that is both quippy and fits the situation. In this case, I chose to show who the Vowmage's vow is to.

6) Finding some art from DeviantArt that fit the theme. This art is from user Ryushadow, and is the only Eternal art I could find.

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Dreadhorde Invasion, like most of its amass kin, is largely forgotten especially in competitive play where it is not a contending strategy. Zombie Armies are incredibly weak to removal and usually aren’t very cost-effective, so their weakness of being a single lone creature that just gets bigger and can be chump-blocked can’t really be ignored. War of the Spark as a whole is a largely forgotten story arc, and despite its misgivings it’s still a shame. Dreadhorde Invasion does not truly have a legacy, though it was reprinted in the Midnight Hunt commander set as a part of Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver’s commander deck. Hopefully, one day, we will see Amass return in a future set with greater support so that Dreadhorde Invasion may one day be viable.

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Alright, everyone! That is the end of my article for today. Please let me know what worked for you and what didn’t so that I can sculpt this new article series to your feedback!

Speaking of user feedback, I would like to have every tenth card be voted upon by the community. If you want to submit an idea for what card we will go over, just let me know in your comment. The comment with the highest number of upvotes will have their card in the tenth article of the series.

Thank you all for the wonderful community we’ve made together! See you soon.

TriusMalarky on Is Grixis Control Weak/Bad in …

3 years ago

If you're running Grixis Bad Control, you should definitely wait until Strixhaven its and run 3-4 copies of Prismari command. The plan is to cast it on your opponent's end step turn 3, and either kill a creature/artifact if they have it, or double loot to make sure you have the right cards. Then you get the treasure, and you can drop your big boi a turn earlier.

Otherwise, if you're going Bad, you need to make sure you have the right interaction. Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, Fatal Push and Lightning Bolt are key. Also, I really recommend some form of 2-mana counterspell, largely Condescend . Remand is okay but it really depends on the quality of your top end. You should also run some suite of 1-mana countermagic, largely Spell Snare , but that depends on what you end up seeing. You definitely have enough between Snare, Spell Pierce , Miscast , Dispel , and Mystical Dispute that you can run several in the SB and also be able to switch your whole SB around depending on your meta.

Terminate is fine, too.

On wraths, Anger is great. But if you want anything bigger, Languish or Ritual of Soot are what you should run.

On wincons, I feel Ultimatum is too slow for Modern. You want 6-drops at most, like Dragonlord Silumgar or Inferno/Grave Titan. Additionally, cards like Niv-Mizzet, Parun , The Scarab God , Keranos, God of Storms , Enter the God-Eternals , Ashiok, Nightmare Muse , etc. are great, as you can go Prismari into t4 Keranos.

I'd recommend a couple Keranos and a couple Silumgar, actually.

Omniscience_is_life on Ghired Populate

3 years ago

Nice deck! I like the use of Iroas. Unfortunately, you can’t run Enter the God-Eternals as it’s color identity is outside that of your commander’s—and one rule of EDH is you can only have cards that are the same color as your commander. Sorry! Keep brewing!

Phostration on Zombie/Amass

3 years ago

Enter the God-Eternals is a great card! Amass 4, gain 4 life, deal 4 damage, and mill enemy for 4! Since you have a lot of other creatures besides amass Widespread Brutality Probably isn't as good. These are from my A Massive Army deck, which is a little more focused on Amassing, but probably a lot more janky than your deck haha.

RiotRunner789 on

3 years ago

Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas might be alright due to you running 14 artifacts. He just helps to get your ramp pieces and has the bonus of gaining you life late-gate which would help since I didn't see any cards that gained life other than Enter the God-Eternals.

You may also want to look at cards like Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead since I didn't notice any cards you were using to steal from your opponent's graveyards.

This deck looks really fun though. Best Bolas deck I've seen flavor-wise.

AjMcGamer on Grixis Recycling Centre

3 years ago

@Azielle This one started as RB but once I was made aware of blues ability in terms of amass and couldn't pass it up. I always love trying to find those obscure decks that others dismiss and seeing if they can work.

@Yarok It has definitely evolved since it's original incarnation. Thank you again for your suggestions.

I have recently been trying Commence the Endgame and Enter the God-Eternals. I have found Commence the Endgame very useful in some games, the instant speed and the fact that it cant be countered really do allow you to do just as the card name says.

Enter the God-Eternals isnt amazing all the time but as Chino90 stated it can be a good card if you are behind (not if the opponent has gone wide). If you just need to remove that one attacker to buy a turn, this card does that (given that creature has 4 or less toughness), gains you some life, mills anything your opponent may have setup, and gives you a 4/4 body that will probably get bigger immediately.

I have started to consider Yorion, Sky Nomad to allow more control into the deck in the way of counter spells and removal.

Thanks again to everyone for the help on this one.