In an EDH setting, green decks can sometimes struggle to generate card advantage. As fun as it can be to flood the board with creatures, it’s also essential that you have ways to recover from a board wipe.
Interestingly, Mercadian Masques has one particularly underrated green card that does a great job of keeping your hand stocked with creatures. Despite falling under the radar, this unique design fits into a variety of different archetypes.
MTG Foster
In a deck that can add lots of creatures to the board, Foster can become a total nuisance for your opponents. As long as the enchantment sticks around and you have mana to spare, you’ll be able to generate value anytime one of your creatures die. This alone makes Foster a worthy consideration for go-wide Tokens shells.
Where things get really interesting, though, is when you have ways to take advantage of this enchantment proactively. Pairing Foster with a sacrificial token generator like Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, for example, lets you churn through your library to find your best creatures.
Similarly, Foster also synergizes perfectly with cards like Awakening Zone and Glaring Fleshraker that produce tokens that can sacrifice themselves. In the case of Eldrazi Spawn and Scion tokens, you can even funnel the mana into Foster’s triggered ability. Things can really start to get out of hand when you throw in sacrifice outlets like Ashnod’s Altar that net you mana, since you’ll have no problem paying for Foster’s trigger with mana to spare.
Outside of Token decks, there are a multitude of Commanders whose abilities naturally cause creatures go to the graveyard. Whether you’re Evoking Elementals with Ashling, the Limitless in play or Blitzing bombs onto the battlefield with Henzie “Toolbox” Torre, Foster ensures you never run out of fuel.
Notably, unlike some other green value engines like Evolutionary Leap, Foster puts any noncreature cards your reveal into your graveyard. This opens the door for graveyard-matters Commanders to abuse Foster as a self-Mill engine. Legends like Grolnok, the Omnivore and Six enable you to cast impactful spells you Mill over, while The Mycotyrant rewards you for Milling noncreature permanents by flooding the board with tokens.
Unique Combo Approaches
As powerful as Foster is in decks with lots of creatures, the enchantment can also make for a sweet combo enabler in decks with few or no creatures. One way to abuse Foster’s ability is to play Thassa’s Oracle as the only creature in your library. Then, once you have Oracle in your hand via a tutor or Foster itself, you can win the game. All you have to do is cast your Commander, then sacrifice it to mill your library. With Commanders that create multiple bodies, you don’t even need a tutor effect to set this up.
If you want to bypass creatures entirely, there are a few Commanders who win the game by allowing Foster to mill their entire library. Grolnok, The Omnivore can pull this combo off without any creatures attached, thanks to recasting Jace, Wielder of Mysteries from the graveyard. The Mycotyrant can do a similar thing, but will instead win by creating a ton of tokens. When using a sacrifice outlet and Bastion of Rememberance, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have an empty deck win condition. The sheer number of tokens The Mycotyrant creates from Foster will be enough to drain all of your opponents to death.
Worthy of More Praise
Despite all of Foster’s build-around potential and versatility, the enchantment remains extremely underplayed. Seeing play in only 1,320 Commander decks according to EDHREC, Foster certainly doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.
Given that the card hasn’t had a reprint since Commander 2013, it isn’t too shocking that it isn’t as widely known. Even still, though, the sheer amount of value the card can generate makes it a strong consideration for a bunch of decks. Considering how multi-purpose this card is, its cheap $0.25 price tag is rather surprising, meaning that you have little reason not to try this in your graveyard-matters strategies.
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