Magic: The Gathering’s Spider-Man set is tantalizingly close now, but Edge of Eternities isn’t sitting down without a fight. It may have only had one real month in the public eye, but in that time, it managed to put a lot of cards in a lot of formats. Whether you play Standard, Modern, or Vintage, Edge of Eternities has reached many MTG players. This was despite an initially frosty reception from many, too. One Edge of Eternities card that few expected to perform well outside of Commander was Ouroboroid, but it turns out it’s one of the biggest MTG sleepers in the set.
While it looks fairly innocuous, this is actually a terrifying threat. It rewards go-wide strategies in a way that few cards do, and synergizes with a ton of established cards to boot. From Standard to Pioneer, and even Modern, players are seeing serious results with this new Plant Wurm. If it hasn’t wrapped its leafy tendrils around you yet, it likely will soon.
Ouroboroid MTG
- Mana Value: 2GG
- Type: Creature – Plant Wurm
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Card Text: At the beginning of combat on your turn, put X +1/+1 counters on each creature you control, where X is this creature’s power.
- Stats: 1/3
As MTG cards go, mythic rares especially, Ouroboroid is incredibly simple. There are a lot of wrinkles to this ability that make it more powerful than it looks at first, mind you.
The fact that this +1/+1 counter ability kicks in at the start of combat, rather than your upkeep, gives Ouroboroid impact on the turn you play it. This is what ultimately makes the card a contender at all, since a four-mana 1/3 with no immediate impact would be far too slow, in any format.
The other great thing about Ouroboroid is that its board-wide buff scales up over time. Since it places counters on itself, thus upping its power, the next turn it’ll place two counters on everything, then four, then eight, etc. One counter per creature per turn would be scary enough, but if Ouroboroid sticks around, then it’s close to unstoppable.
If you’re not keen on waiting around for a bigger buff, you can also use pump spells to accelerate the process. Ouroboroid only cares about its power, so any card that boosts that is fair game. Giant Growth hasn’t been good enough for Standard in some time, but with Ouroboroid it becomes “put three extra +1/+1 counters on each of your creatures” for just one mana.
Naturally, Ouroboroid’s effectiveness is tied to how often your deck can field a wide board of creatures. It’s a pretty unimpressive card just sitting out alone, even for multiple turns. Thankfully, this isn’t a big ask for many Magic decks at the moment.
Slithering Into Standard
At the moment, Ouroboroid is doing most of its work in MTG Standard. A number of decks are employing their Plant-based talents, some of which are fairly strong meta players.
Simic Midrange is the most popular of these decks by a fair margin. This is a relatively new brew, only really coming into existence after Edge of Eternities dropped. It uses Llanowar Elves to ramp into a selection of chunky creatures, Ouroboroid being one of them. This is a deck that goes wide easily, so Ouroboroid’s ability will almost always hit hard. It also runs a bunch of ways to boost its power, like Genemorph Imago and Bristly Bill. Bill can even double the counters on all the creatures Ouroboroid buffed for huge swing turns.
For similar reasons, Mono-Green Aggro is also loving Ouroboroid right now. This is a more straightforward list, running a ton of aggressive creatures like Frenzied Baloth and aiming to curve out for an early win. It also plays a lot of incidental Tramplers, like Pawpatch Recruit, Baloth, and Surrak, Elusive Hunter. These cards are fantastic with Ouroboroid, since the extra power doesn’t just get absorbed by pesky chump blockers. Mono-Green also runs both Overprotect and Giant Growth for surprise counter explosions, too.
Finally, the once-mighty Golgari Midrange has started using Ouroboroid, too. This has always been a deck that prioritizes individual card quality over synergy, and that’s still true today. It just plays the best creatures in black and green, and hopes for the best. Ouroboroid doesn’t unlock any particular lines here: it’s just a solid four-drop that caps off the deck nicely. When you’re trying to keep up with the counter shenanigans Vivi Cauldron can pull, something like this helps a lot.
Eternal Growth
Ouroboroid isn’t just seeing play in Standard, either: a number of decks in older MTG formats have found slots for it as well. In Modern, for example, Simic Ritual has put its counter-based goodness to use.
Here, the card essentially serves as a ‘bridge’ for the strategy. Birthing Ritual is similar to Birthing Pod in that it asks you to include creatures of each mana cost to build up to what you want. Quantum Riddler now sits at the top of the deck’s curve, so some four drops are necessary in order to bridge into it. Ouroboroid fits nicely here, since it can give you value the turn you cast it, so you don’t feel bad about sacrificing it in the end step.
It’s also nice alongside the deck’s many Fliers, like Ice-Fang Coatl and Abhorrent Oculus.Simic Ritual can play a fair creature beatdown game, too, and Ouroboroid supports that massively.
Down in Pioneer, Ouroboroid is being tested in the flagging Gruul Vehicles strategy. This deck hasn’t put up real results in a while, and some have been testing the card as a possible solution to that problem. With Esika’s Chariot, the deck easily goes wide enough to reap the benefits from Ouroboroid’s ability. Placing counters on animated Vehicles is also a great move. So far this hasn’t elevated the deck much in terms of win rate, but it’s worth keeping an eye on for the future.
Ouroboroid is a classic example of why you shouldn’t write off any given mythic rare right away. While it hasn’t exceeded expectations in the same way Quantum Riddler has, it’s still a surprise hit from Magic’s latest set.
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