Delving into Magic’s Reserved List is a bit of a surreal experience. Once you get past the obvious, blue-chip big-hitters, the bulk of the list is actually made up of bizarre cards that just happened to be printed in old sets. Most of these are little more than overpriced curios, but there are some genuine gems in there as well. Flooded Shoreline, for example, is a unique MTG card held in stasis by Wizards’ 30-year-old promise.
While it sounds like an obscure land, Flooded Shoreline is actually an enchantment, and one that offers an effect rarely seen in Magic. As a result, it opens up a number of potent combo lines in Commander. Throw in a whole bunch of secondary applications in other strategies, and the current low price on this thing starts to look more and more baffling.
Flooded Shoreline MTG
Flooded Shoreline is, essentially, a repeatable bounce spell that comes at a very steep cost. By paying two blue mana and returning two Islands to your hand, you can bounce any creature on the battlefield. While this sounds pretty awful at first, the card’s old-school origins really come into play in its favor here, as it lacks many of the safety valves we’ve come to expect on designs like this.
For starters, the Islands you return don’t need to be untapped, which is huge right out of the gate. This means you can tap them to pay for the double blue activation cost, helping to smooth things out. They also don’t need to be basic Islands, either, which opens up some interesting avenues. You can bounce a Mystic Sanctuary back to your hand to grab a spell from your ‘yard, for example, or just re-use a Surveil land for more card selection. While bouncing two lands is a big issue early in the game, later on it’s much less problematic. If you lack a land drop for the turn, you can bounce an Island to this and just play it again.
On top of that, the creature bounce effect is also incredibly open. You can use it at instant speed, which is always great, and you can target your own creatures as well as your opponents’. This flexibility lets you use the card offensively, to deal with a blocker or pesky utility creature, as well as defensively, to protect one of your own key creatures from removal. It’s also one of the very few available hedges against land-based board wipes like Armageddon, if your pod is sadistic enough to run those.
Commander Combos
While Flooded Shoreline is a solid card on its own, it really shines as an MTG combo enabler. There are a number of ways to go infinite with this card in Commander, using some equally obscure cards in some cases.
The big one here is pairing Flooded Shoreline with forgotten Kamigawa legend Patron of the Moon. By paying one mana, Patron can put both the lands you bounce back to your hand with Shoreline right back into play, albeit tapped.
This is a nice synergy by itself, since it essentially gives you a repeatable three-mana bounce spell to work with. Throw in Amulet of Vigor, however, and suddenly it’s just one mana. Add High Tide on top of that, and you’ll be able to bounce every creature in play while also generating infinite mana to carry out whichever dastardly scheme you’d like. Walking Ballista allows for an easy instant win here, or you can instead draw your deck with Stroke of Genius then close out with Thassa’s Oracle. This combo also slots perfectly into a The Wandering Minstrel Commander deck, since it essentially serves as an Amulet of Vigor in the command zone.
Shoreline also creates a nifty infinite combo with Retreat to Coralhelm and Walking Atlas. Since Retreat untaps Atlas every time it puts a land into play, you can easily loop the two lands you bounce with Shoreline in and out of play. This leads to infinite Landfall triggers, which in turn can finish the table off via Ruin Crab or Hedron Crab. You can also sub Walking Atlas out for PuPu UFO, or even Sakura-Tribe Scout if you’re in Simic.
An Unusual Multi-Tool
If combo wins aren’t really your style, then fear not: Flooded Shoreline has plenty to offer to other types of MTG player, too. Turns out having a way to bounce lands back to your hand on demand is something a lot of different decks can take advantage of.
Naturally, non-combo Landfall decks are a great home for the card. Simply having two more lands to play to keep your triggers going is solid, and you can likely get them back into play quickly with common Landfall tools like Exploration and Burgeoning. The tempo advantage of bouncing opposing creatures while also advancing your core gameplan is fantastic here.
Another avenue you can pursue with Flooded Shoreline is as a bizarre card advantage engine. In the late game, you can shuffle away the lands it bounces with Scroll Rack to draw two ‘real’ cards instead. Much like Land Tax in white, this is a roundabout way of seeing more of your deck. In a similar vein, discard-focused Commanders like Norman Osborn//Green Goblin can really take advantage of having two extra cards in hand. You can toss them away to your looting effects, and even recycle them via Containment Construct for maximum value.
Flooded Shoreline is a card with a ton of potential in a range of Commander strategies. EDHREC puts it in just over 1500 lists, too, which is pitiful given how versatile it is. Next time you shuffle up a blue deck, consider giving this bargain bounce engine a bash.
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