Radiant Lotus
28, Jan, 25

New MTG Aetherdrift Introduces Broken Lotus Card

Lotus cards have been everpresent in Magic: The Gathering. Ever since Black Lotus became the most iconic effect in all of Magic, multiple attempts were made to relive the glory of the Power Nine gem. For obvious reasons, however, recreating the most powerful effect in all of Magic is going to cause some problems.

As a result, every Lotus effect printed after Black Lotus has done something a bit different. How does one recreate the iconic effect without breaking it? We’ve seen a lot of different answers to this question, but very few, if any, have gotten the answer right. Lotuses have traditionally either been terrible or broken and nothing in between.

Aetherdrift has yet another Lotus for players to consider, and it is very unclear whether this card is broken or terrible. While the costs for the card are high, so is the award.

Radiant Lotus

There’s a lot more going on with this particular Lotus than it may seem. A mana value of six means that Radiant Lotus is one of the most expensive Lotus cards that Magic has ever seen. Like any Lotus, this card wants to generate mana, in particular, a ton of it.

To use Radiant Lotus properly, you need to set up your board in a way that will allow you to generate an absurd amount of mana. You need to sacrifice artifacts to generate mana with Radiant Lotus, but you can sacrifice as many as you want at one time. For each one you sacrifice, you get three colored mana.

This means that, in order to use Radiant Lotus properly, you need to sacrifice a ton of artifacts at once. Generating three, or even six mana with Radiant Lotus isn’t going to make it worth your time. You’ll need to generate 12 or more mana with Radiant Lotus to really create some explosive opportunities.

This could allow Radiant Lotus to become an interesting finisher for Affinity decks. Sacrifice your board to Radiant Lotus and cast a gigantic spell to end the game. You can even do it the turn you resolve Radiant Lotus, which can create some surprisingly explosive turns.

Is Radiant Lotus Good?

Radiant Lotus is the type of engine card that creates strategies. You need to build around the card in order to make it work, which means Radiant Lotus is very difficult to assess. Six mana is a large barrier to entry for this effect, which will make it more difficult to use in older formats. This needs to be one of the best things to do for six mana in your strategy to make it worth running.

Restricting things even further is Radiant Lotus’s tap requirement. This was done in order to avoid recreating an artifact like Krark-Clan Ironworks that is not only problematically powerful but incredibly boring for gameplay purposes. Radiant Lotus can create a big effect in one fell swoop, while Krark-Clan Ironworks creates a massive chain of effects that grinds the game to a halt.

Most players are not impressed with Radiant Lotus’s effects. The requirements to create a massive payoff appear to be far too difficult to enable. Sure, some decks will be able to maximize the card usage, but will it even be worthwhile, or will there be more efficient payoffs to use? Six mana makes this very difficult to justify. That said, the ludicrous amount of mana Radiant Lotus generates has stronger MTG players convinced that the card is broken. You can also use the card to generate mana immediately, which has gotten other cards banned from formats in the past.

While Radiant Lotus has huge potential, it does look a little too difficult to find a home for. Who knows? Maybe this card will end up creating a whole new combo deck. That said, many players were quick to mention that Radiant Lotus does have a scary synergy with Esoteric Duplicator. You may not be able to use the mana generated by Radiant Lotus for the Duplicator since it has a targeted ability, but the Duplicator can still generate an entire copy of the board you sacrificed.

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