Pointed Discussion

Ah, the deck-thinning mana-ramping goody! If you strongly need 5 mana on turn four, without any tricks attached - seek no more. The kami will it.
Aesthetically I like this card from top-left to bottom-right. Home run it is!

Though I like Elder Pine of Jukai better in Spirit decks, this is nonetheless an astounding card. I'd say every deck with green in it should have at least two of these.

Very nice land acceleration.

harrow is better since it's instant speed (if you like landfall this really can catch people offguard) and the extra land you get doesn't come into play tapped (in fact since both of harrow's lands are untapped the spell effectively costed you only 1 mana. 3 lands initially, tap all 3, sac one, put two into play, you have 2 mana open).

Not to say that this is a bad card, pretty sure it saw play when kamigawa was in standard. But with harrow around there's really no point in using this.

I understand what your getting at, mdakw576, but the beauty of this card is that it grabs a total of 2 new land from your deck, as opposed to harrows 1 (lose 1 get 2). one land right into play, one guarenteed land drop next turn.

A nearly functional reprint of this card has been leaked for m11. The difference: Cultivate will allow you to search for one and chose whether to put it into play or into your hand.

@gcilley: Shows how much you can trust leaks. It's up on the visual spoiler and it's simply a non-arcane reprint of Kodama's Reach.

Why would you ever want to put the card in your hand instead of on the battlefield, anyway? Besides really goofy combos. And landfall, but they wouldn't put an otherwise fairly useless clause on it just to satisfy a single set mechanic.

I play this in a green token deck with Howl of the night pack. I like it more than harrow because if you don't have any land it will put some in your hand, unlike terramorphic expanse or harrow it doesn't activate landfall twice.

The new Cultivate in M11 is the exact same. I plan on making good use of it now in some standard Beastmaster Ascension decks ^_^

Many people tend to overlook the fact that Kodama's Reach is an arcane spell. It's not exactly the same as Cultivate, but close enough to compare.

I like Cultivate because of the art and Kodama's Reach because of the memories.

If you plan on splicing onto arcane, then this becomes better then Cultivate. If your deck is like most decks, that don't care about that, then it does not matter. Its unfair to say this is strictly better then cultivate when its very rare that will ever be cared about, unless thats something you wish to do. Plus their is a counter that hoses arcanes, so you strictly better argument is invalid.

EDH staple in any deck running any sort of green.

The day Hisoka's Defiance actually sees play is the day I will stop calling this strictly better than cultivate.

Random card... And I play the dickens out of this one... So I guess the fun of evaluating it is reduced.

So, this guy along with the non arcane variant cultivate can be rather potent in games you expect to go into the higher mana zones, such as EDH, or formats that land drops get scary to deal with, such as draft.

Something to think about, when you're running nothing but basics, this guy will nab you exactly what you need. Casting this spell ensures you won't be worrying about mana (unless you need to get to seven or higher) and if you draft two of them, you can almost comfortably build a three color deck.

Rating:
Pauper-Possible if you want to cast something big or play three colors.
Modern-Maybe, I wouldn't though, the decks with acceleration I like (and have seen do well) want to grab nonbasics.
EDH-Yes. Every five color deck loves this guy, as do three colored decks with green in them.
Draft-Second Pick, if there's not a card that will win you the game in the pack, this is likely what I'd grab.

the original green Divination