Essence of the Wild

Creature — Avatar

Creatures you control enter the battlefield as a copy of Essence of the Wild.

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
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (41)

Neotrup on Erebos and Devotion

9 months ago

The Gods do have a bit of on odd edge case when your devotion is 4. Since your devotion is five once Erebos, Bleak-Hearted is on the battlefield, it will trigger enter the battlefield effects like Guardian Project (denoted by the words "when" or "whenever"), but won't be entering as a creature so it will ignore replacement effects like Essence of the Wild.

hiddengibbons on Essence of the Wild and …

1 year ago

If I have Essence of the Wild on the battlefield and cast Flayer Husk, would I get an Essence of the Wild token with Flayer husk attached to it or does the replacement somehow alter whether the equipment is attached because it’s not a germ token?

Sky_Blue_Skies on "Dark Forest" Abzan Midrange

2 years ago

Well said! I've seen some really great lists that take advantage of the natural synergy between Essence of the Wild and mana dorks. This is a recipe for synergistic, snowbally gameplay, especially when coupled with green card draw effects like Harmonize . While I acknowledge that an elf-ish direction is probably the way to make a deck like this work at a speed remotely suitable for modern's competitive scene, it doesn't appeal to me as much as trying to make Essence work (admittedly quite jankily) in an Abzan Midrange or ValueTown-style build. The goal here is to design a deck that does pretty well in the early and mid-game due to overall card quality and synergistic play such that it doesn't actually require the combo to win, but can do so with other means if necessary. Hence, this project is more an exploration of Magic design history and potential than an attempt at (re)introducing a new/old deck into the Modern meta, though I certainly appreciate your ideas and critique.

BigSwettiYeti on G/w Token

3 years ago

Essence of the Wild

dingusdingo on Pattern Recognition #170 - Kobolds

3 years ago

Altar of the Brood + Cloudstone Curio + Crimson Kobolds + Crimson Kobolds for a combo kill with just 4 cards and mana.

Does incredible work with Mana Echoes, pair with any X spell.

Does incredible work with Paradoxical Outcome, especially with storm cards or Aetherflux Reservoir

Free cantrips with Glimpse of Nature, fantastic with multiples. This was the basis of a legacy deck, here's a link https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/508428#paper It is a deprecated deck, but it is probably 1 or 2 printings from a spicy return, and should be looked at in any serious discussion of kobolds

Also see Beast Whisperer, Primordial Sage, and Soul of the Harvest.

Huge ramp with Gaea's Cradle

Wombo combo with Essence of the Wild for beatdowns

Can even go for casual beatdowns with Tribal Unity or Coat of Arms or Beastmaster Ascension.

Just because you can't think outside the box doesn't mean they are terrible cards. It took me five minutes to find these combos and this deck, probably less time than it took to write your article.

Kher Keep is not a bad card. Instant speed token creation has lots of uses, especially blocking in EDH. Being on a land means it is extremely hard to interact with. Off the top if my head, it can be useful for creatures in a Polymorph style deck, or any deck that doesn't want to slot creature cards in the deck.

Sky_Blue_Skies on "Dark Forest" Abzan Midrange

3 years ago

Many thanks for your comment! I've honestly struggled quite a bit with deciding what the deck should use as its plan A. As I'm trying to make this more of a dedicated, janky vehicle for exploiting Essence of the Wild , I've given up some of the more conventional means of making it efficient or consistent. So far my approach has sought to strike a balance between including "generically good" cards that work reasonably well on their own as efficient token engines alongside cards that work specifically with Essence to enable absurd late-game boards. Results have been mixed, but by all indications early-game ramp should be an essential part of the deck, and for that reason I have doubled-up on mana dorks and stacked the three-drop slots with cards that work fine on turns 2-3 as a straight-up token strategy, but are also insane top-decks once Essence or Tendershoot Dryad is in play. My hope is that the deck can still be fun to play on casual tables even if I don't draw Essence and have to make due with crowding the board with spirits and saprolings, or by getting value out of Brimaz, King of Oreskos , Leonin Warleader , or Master of the Wild Hunt . While I fully appreciate the ubiquitous value of high-power removal spells like Path to Exile , I tend to hold off on playing these cards until someone in my playgroup annoys me enough to do so. On the other hand, I'd love to know if anyone has any thoughts on how to improve card selection in the early turns without messing too much with the balance of ramp-enablers and payoffs.

1empyrean on Make a Sand Token and Maybe I'll Actually Cast You

3 years ago

Essence of the Wild could make for some ridiculous tokens, amd you could mutate onto it to make them even better.

Chevill, Bane of Monsters, Kathril, Aspect Warper, and Mysterious Egg are cards that you should probably cut. Kathril is quite good with support, but I think the keyword soup theme is too shallow to work here amd dilutes the deck. The egg is just not great. It does little as a mutate target, especially since your commander should be your mutate target. Zagoth Mamba has the same problem, but its better than the egg.

If you want to keep Chevill in the deck, at least put Mathas, Fiend Seeker in the deck. Bounty Hunter would be cool as well, but is probably out of budget for you.

zapyourtumor on "Dark Forest" Abzan Midrange

3 years ago

One problem with Essence of the Wild is that it reads "creatures you control enter the battlefield as a copy" which means that you want it on the field before you do all the token shenanigans. Because of this, I think the deck would perform better if you either tried to reanimate Essence of the Wild or ramp up into it as fast as possible.

Reanimation would be difficult to build around, though, but you could do stuff like Footsteps of the Goryo + Elvish Mystic for a permanent copy of essence on turn 4 and then all your tokens after that are copies of it.

Other than that, have you considered adding some interaction? Path to Exile for example