As a general rule, the older an MTG format is, the less often new cards are able to make an impact there. For players who have spent the thousands of dollars required to play in these formats, that tends to be a good thing. That said, seeing a new card shuffled up alongside the Ancestral Recalls and Time Walks of the world is always exciting. This week, we’ve seen just that. Into the Flood Maw, a humble MTG uncommon from Bloomburrow, is seeing play in Vintage. Not only that, but it’s claiming slots in Standard, Pioneer, and Modern, too.
Into The Flood Maw In Vintage
Specifically, Into the Flood Maw is seeing play in Oath of Druids: a classic MTG Vintage deck built around the titular enchantment. Essentially, Oath of Druids lets you cheat out a creature from your deck if your opponent controls more creatures than you. By limiting the creatures in the deck to just Atraxa, Grand Unifier, Oath players can guarantee a big hit every time. They cheat out Atraxa early, load up on resources thanks to her enters, and then ride that momentum to victory. Simple, yet effective.
How does Into the Flood Maw fit in? Quite nicely, it turns out. The card looks like a fairly innocuous bounce spell at first, and for the most part, it is. The reason it’s seeing play in Oath of Druids is because of its ‘Gift a tapped Fish’ ability. With this, you can guarantee your opponent has a creature in play to trigger Oath, even if they don’t cast one themselves. You can also deal with any problem permanents they have out at the same time.
The deck has other ways of achieving this, of course. Forbidden Orchard springs to mind. Into the Flood Maw provides redundancy, however. It also serves as an answer to other big creatures, and can really screw up a Psychic Frog your opponent has already invested a few cards in. Cards that fulfill multiple roles are always in hot demand, and that’s what Into the Flood Maw does. It’s really interesting to see what seems like a downside actually be the main reason a card makes it into a deck, but that’s the twisty reality of Vintage as a format.
Fishy Fun In Other Formats
Vintage isn’t where Into the Flood Maw’s dominance ends. The card is also seeing play in Standard, Pioneer, and Modern. In Standard, it’s seeing play in quite a few lists, but mostly spellslinger strategies like Izzet Tempo. As a cheap spell that can clear an opposing blocker, this makes perfect sense. The free Fish is actually a legitimate downside here, but typically you’ll be hitting a creature with this anyway, so you won’t need to Gift it too often.
When it comes to Modern and Pioneer, Into the Flood Maw is largely part of Combo decks. Specifically, Storm lists like Twiddle Storm and Ruby Storm. These decks aim to cast a critical mass of spells in a turn, then finish the opponent off with a huge Storm spell like Grapeshot. The reasoning for Into the Flood Maw’s inclusion here is less clear than for the previous decks. It is a great answer to floodgates and hate pieces, though, which Combo decks typically struggle against.
Since it can hit any nonland permanent, you can deal with Trinisphere and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben alike. Gifting the Fish is also a non-issue here since Combo decks don’t care about your opponent’s board presence. While it doesn’t look like much, Into the Flood Maw is actually the cheapest version of this effect at instant speed, which makes it incredibly valuable when going into a combo turn.
Cards with this much multi-format reach are a rare thing indeed. We haven’t seen a huge amount of buzz about Into the Flood Maw so far. It’s not a cute headliner legend, after all. But once players catch on to its simple, workmanlike efficiency and flexibility, I get the feeling it’ll have a lot more fans soon.
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