In just a few days time, previews for Magic: The Gathering’s Spider-Man set will begin. This, unfortunately, means that Edge of Eternities is being pushed out of the spotlight after only a month in it. This is a real shame, because the set still has plenty to offer. Cards from Edge of Eternities have found homes everywhere from Standard to Vintage, and more are rearing their heads every day. A great example is Devastating Onslaught, one of the best, most flexible new MTG cards in the set.
Despite its very reasonable sub-$2 price tag, this is a mythic that’s seeing a good deal of play. A number of Standard decks are running it, some as a core piece in their strategy. It’s making waves in Commander, too, where it slots nicely into some of the more high-end decks in the format. It’s easy to miss hidden gems like this in Magic’s now-endless spoiler season, but for those who pay attention the rewards will be rich.
Devastating Onslaught MTG
- Mana Value: XXR
- Type: Sorcery
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Card Text: Create X tokens that are copies of target artifact or creature you control. Those tokens gain Haste until end of turn. Sacrifice them at the beginning of the next end step.
Devastating Onslaught is the latest card in what is quickly becoming an MTG tradition: red instants and sorceries that copy your permanents. From Molten Duplication, to Twinflame, to Heat Shimmer, we’ve seen a number of these cards over the years. They’ve typically proven popular, too, since they offer an easy way for many decks to generate value.
What really sets Onslaught apart from the pack is its flexibility and scalability. First of all, it can target artifacts as well as creatures. So far, only Molten Duplication offers this option, so that’s a great start for the card. There are plenty of artifacts that absolutely pop off in multiples, and Onslaught lets you take advantage of that fact.
The fact that Onslaught is an X spell is also hugely relevant. This lets you make more copies of your chosen permanent by sinking more mana: something none of the above cards can do. Twinflame can copy multiple creatures, due to Strive, but it can’t create multiple copies of the same creature. This is a crucial difference, and one that matters a lot for combo plays.
All in all, Onslaught is a bit of a sidegrade to these existing cards, but it does have one major advantage: its current price. You can get copies for around $1.80 right now, as opposed to the $5-15 you’d pay for one of the others. Considering its mythic status, and the proven effectiveness of cards like this, that’s a steal no matter which way you look at it.
Smashing Up Standard
Devastating Onslaught isn’t just hypothetically powerful, either: it’s already seeing real play in more than one MTG format. Right now it’s doing most of its work in Standard, where it’s propping up a couple of potent Combo decks.
Most prominent among these is Temur Battlecrier, a combo brew that debuted during the recent Arena Championships. This is a deck built around the titular Tarkir creature, which aims to build a huge board of creatures and drop a Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest to burn your opponent out in a single turn. Battlecrier’s mana discount is the key to this combo, and you can multiply its effectiveness by copying it with Devastating Onslaught. Alternatively, you can copy something like Anticausal Vestige to swell your board presence. Either way, Battlecrier’s generic mana discount makes Devastating Onslaught much easier to use than usual.
Onslaught is also seeing play alongside Railway Brawler in another Standard Combo deck. In this case, Onslaught is actually a crucial part of the combo, rather than a support piece. If you can cast it for X=2 with a Brawler out, you can create two 15/15 Hasty Tramplers and swing in for the win. It’s pretty easy to pull this off by Plotting Brawler on turn four, but the deck also plays a ton of ramp, so playing both pieces in a single turn isn’t out of the question.
Both of these decks are delivering solid results right now. As solid as you can expect in the midst of this Vivi Cauldron Summer we’re suffering through, anyway. Onslaught is also seeing scattered use in Naya Yuna, which is a bit more of a fringe deck right now. Copying either Overlord of the Boilerbilges or Overlord of the Mistmoors multiple times is huge, and can easily close things out if timed right.
Crushing It In Commander
It’s not just in MTG Standard that Devastating Onslaught is putting in work. In Commander, it’s seeing a good amount of play too. This isn’t hugely surprising, given that exponential value with a downside is better suited to this format than two-player ones. What is surprising is how much the card is being used in more serious, competitively-minded decks.
Take Etali, Primal Conqueror, for example. This is one of the best ‘brute force’ Commanders in the game. Heck, it’s even good enough to see regular use in cEDH. According to EDHRec, over 300 Etali lists are running Onslaught already, which is a good sign, given it’s been just a month on shelves. A lot of high-level Etali decks prioritize blinking or copying their Commander for value, and Onslaught gives you a way to do so multiple times in a single card slot. Even in more casual brews, having a late-game mana sink that doubles as an early-game play is fantastic.
Onslaught is also showing up regularly in Shadow the Hedgehog and Deadpool lists. In the former, it’s an enabler for a potential infinite combo with Dualcaster Mage. Shadow’s abilities lend themselves naturally to the combo playstyle, since they let you run out your key pieces without fear of reprisal. In Deadpool, it’s a way to shut down opposing creatures en masse. though you’ll lose your extra Deadpools to the legend rule, they still get to switch out an opposing text box on entry.
With so much Standard and Commander presence at the moment, Devastating Onslaught may end up being one of the biggest sleeper hits in Edge of Eternities when the dust settles.
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