Assassin’s Creed is a really strange Universes Beyond set. Despite technically being a direct-to-Modern set, few cards were strong enough to impact 60-card formats. This made the set feel like a bit of a misnomer, helping it to fly under the radar more than it did already.
Miraculously, many MTG players are now paying attention to this set thanks to the recent Marvel crossover cards. Captain America, First Avenger, in particular, has drummed up a great deal of interest in powerful equipment. Somewhat surprisingly, plenty of these can be found in the Assassin’s Creed MTG set.
Once again, however, these powerful and expensive equipment cards don’t really impact competitive MTG. At long last, however, it seems Assassin’s Creed has broken into the big leagues recently. Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine has made its competitive debut, helping a unique deck win a recent Legacy Showcase Challenge on Magic Online. It seems this card is the real deal, and could even impact Modern!
Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine
Yggdrasil looks like a moderately strong reanimation tool. Capable of exiling any creatures in your graveyard and playing them later, Yggdrasil functions a bit like a worse Sneak Attack. You can also exile cards from the top of your library to find creatures to cheat in, which has strong synergies with Brainstorm and Ponder. Getting Brainstorm locked can be a death sentence in Legacy, and Yggdrasil grants another way to avoid that outside of Fetch Lands. Mind you, you should ideally be using this card to cheat creatures in, at least in the Sneak & Show deck that won the Legacy Showcase Challenge with this card.
Yggdrasil is much stronger than it seems in Legacy thanks to the format’s overall structure. This card dodges the likes of Pyroblast and Hydroblast in post-board games, making it rather annoying to counter. Otherwise, this basically functions as additional copies of Show & Tell or Sneak Attack, which gives you more threats against Delver-style counterspell decks.
While Yggdrasil is undeniably an interesting option for Legacy, it is worse than the two namesake spells that the archetype is named after. Sneak Attack only needs one mana to cheat creatures into play, and Show & Tell does the whole deal for three mana. Yggdrasil needs seven mana to do the same thing.
Additionally, because Eldrazi Aggro is absolutely everywhere, Consign to Memory has become very popular. This card can counter Yggdrasil for just one mana. Players shouldn’t really be siding in Consign to Memory against you, but decks like Stiflenaught are going to run these maindeck because they apply to both sides of their game plan.
Yggdrasil in Modern
Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine isn’t currently seeing any Modern play, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any applications for the card in the format. The card could be a very powerful tool in Through the Breach Eldrazi and Goryo’s Vengeance decks.
While Legacy has Sneak Attack, the best tool that Modern has to do a similar thing is Through the Breach. The card costs five mana, which is incredibly inefficient compared to Legacy’s tools. Through the Breach Eldrazi can power this out on turn three, but those draws are rare. That said, the synergy with Ugin’s Labyrinth allows haymakers like Emrakul, The Aeons Torn and Ulamog, the Defiler to have two purposes.
Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine could easily see play in Through the Breach Eldrazi. With Ugin’s Labyrinth, you can deploy the artifact on turn two. On turn three, you can start cheating in massive copies of Eldrazi into play with Yggdrasil’s second effect. Imprinting Emrakul and cheating Ulamog into play creates a 22/22 with Annihilator 15, which can easily clean games up. With eight different cheating effects available, this deck may begin to feel a bit more like Sneak & Show.
Alternatively, Yggdrasil could see experimentation in Goryo’s Vengeance decks. One of the bigger weaknesses of Goryo’s Vengeance is that there are only four reanimator spells in the deck. This makes the deck incredibly reliant on finding copies of its namesake card. Yggdrasil adds four more copies of cards that can reanimate Atraxa, Grand Arbiter from the bin. Notably, Yggdrasil exiles all creatures in your graveyard upon entry, which means that it can cheat those cards into play for four mana. This is rather expensive compared to Goryo’s Vengeance, but Yggdrasil can also exile cards from the top of your deck, allowing the card to continually threaten to blow the game out until dealt with.
Modern’s Next All-Star?
Considering the next Regional Championship circuit is Modern, a lot of eyes will be on the format in the new year. For now, the format seems to be in the ‘One Ring ban waiting room’ but once the December ban announcement is out of the way, we’ll know exactly where the format lies.
A lot of decks are going to get weaker following the One Ring ban if it does get banned. Eldrazi is certainly no exception to this. Yggdrasil may give the deck the tools it needs to rally back to a winning position.