Eternal Warrior #28: Spirit of Eden

Thanks for the comments. I agree it would have been a nice solution to that issue, since Elesh will be stuck in hand a non-trivial amount of the time. The problem is that, while Ancestral at least cycles on the opposing turn, Brainstorm is just actively terrible with SotL in play. There’s a full playset of SotL and the deck is practically built around the card. And there’s really no matchup where SotL gets boarded out — the 3 power trades with Lodestone, so it’s still relevant even against Shops — or else I’d run Brainstorm in the board at least. I do still get value from the fetches in conjunction with Portent, letting me keep piles with only one relevant card.

In formats where I don’t have access to Brainstorm (so basically just Modern) and have cards I don’t want stuck in hand, I typically use Vendilion Clique to bottom the card. I certainly could consider a copy or two of that card here, though the deck hardly needs another 3 cmc spell.