Generates card advantage, helps reach threshold, and has great art. What's not to love? 4.5/5
Shiduba
★★☆☆☆ (2.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Well if you're short of lands this will get you some faster (hopefully) but it can also result in sending some good cards to your graveyard. It's kind of double-edged, 3/5.
VampireCat
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Very handy card in landfall decks to get some lands.
The fact it dumps the rest into the graveyard makes this card a combo-enabler for B/G reanimation decks.
jsttu
★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0)(2 votes)
Dredge
face-fister
★★★★☆ (4.3/5.0)(3 votes)
It's a win-win. a WIN-WIN.
Thrax7
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(2 votes)
being reprinted in innistrad :D
Lyoncet
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
It's not really a double-edged sword, statistically speaking (with some fringe exceptions... more on that later*).
It's true that sometimes you really want to see card X (or more likely, card X or card Y or card Z), and Mulch forces you to discard it. Well, that sucks. But played out over enough games, you'll be just as likely for Mulch to get card X/Y/Z out faster as you are to have it take longer. It doesn't always seem that way, because it's a lot easier to notice when Mulch discards the card you needed than it is to notice that Mulch got you four cards closer to the card you needed. Average out how much it's slowed you down by passing a key card vs. how many times it's gotten you one sooner, and it will almost always come out to 50/50 or thereabouts. (Same is true for being milled, but that doesn't stop people who don't quite get it from saying it's overpowered because it can get rid of your good cards.)
Now, that's not enough to warrant paying {1}{G} at sorcery speed. But of course that's not all the card does. It may end up putting all four cards in your graveyard, in which case you get card disadvantage of one, but it may also replicate itself, or give up to card advantage of three.
A card advantage range of -1 to +3 is a risky proposal at this cost, so you need to be careful. But, if your deck has any way of using your graveyard as a resource, this is a grand slam. Dredge loves this card. Threshold loves this card. Reanimator loves this card. Flashback loves this card. Basically, if you can spare a few slots and a couple dual-lands, any graveyard-centric deck will be better with Mulch than without it. This is because if it doesn't give you straight card advantage, it's giving you virtual card advantage, meaning while you don't have extra cards in your hand or on your board, you have more toys to play with either by effectively tutoring with Reanimate/Dredge, by powering up your Threshold cards, or by casting from your graveyard with Flashback.
So that's a long way of saying this: Mulch isn't a 3.7-star card. It's obviously not going in every deck that runs green, but if you run any graveyard mechanic, it's a grand slam on many levels. Sure, in Innistrad it's going to have to compete with Think Twice and the new Desperate Ravings, but for decks that don't run Red or Blue it's a stellar enabler. And RUG decks could easily run all three in varying amounts depending on the focus of the deck.
*There ARE some decks where you clearly will not want this card even if you have some graveyard shenanigans going on. Most notably in the current meta is in Birthing Pod decks. The deck thrives on being able to select the right creature at the right time and being able to properly ramp up to each consecutive CMC. Accidentally putting the Acidic Slime you desperately need to destroy your opponent's Phyrexian Metamorph before podding into your Sun Titan would be absolutely disastrous. Same goes for any deck that's reliant on tutors to fetch particular answers, since they tend to run only a few of each answer. Also of note are formats like Vintage, where you may discard a precious, essential restricted card that you have 20 ways of searching but no or few ways of retrieving from your graveyard.
Comments (8)
The fact it dumps the rest into the graveyard makes this card a combo-enabler for B/G reanimation decks.
It's true that sometimes you really want to see card X (or more likely, card X or card Y or card Z), and Mulch forces you to discard it. Well, that sucks. But played out over enough games, you'll be just as likely for Mulch to get card X/Y/Z out faster as you are to have it take longer. It doesn't always seem that way, because it's a lot easier to notice when Mulch discards the card you needed than it is to notice that Mulch got you four cards closer to the card you needed. Average out how much it's slowed you down by passing a key card vs. how many times it's gotten you one sooner, and it will almost always come out to 50/50 or thereabouts. (Same is true for being milled, but that doesn't stop people who don't quite get it from saying it's overpowered because it can get rid of your good cards.)
Now, that's not enough to warrant paying {1}{G} at sorcery speed. But of course that's not all the card does. It may end up putting all four cards in your graveyard, in which case you get card disadvantage of one, but it may also replicate itself, or give up to card advantage of three.
A card advantage range of -1 to +3 is a risky proposal at this cost, so you need to be careful. But, if your deck has any way of using your graveyard as a resource, this is a grand slam. Dredge loves this card. Threshold loves this card. Reanimator loves this card. Flashback loves this card. Basically, if you can spare a few slots and a couple dual-lands, any graveyard-centric deck will be better with Mulch than without it. This is because if it doesn't give you straight card advantage, it's giving you virtual card advantage, meaning while you don't have extra cards in your hand or on your board, you have more toys to play with either by effectively tutoring with Reanimate/Dredge, by powering up your Threshold cards, or by casting from your graveyard with Flashback.
So that's a long way of saying this: Mulch isn't a 3.7-star card. It's obviously not going in every deck that runs green, but if you run any graveyard mechanic, it's a grand slam on many levels. Sure, in Innistrad it's going to have to compete with Think Twice and the new Desperate Ravings, but for decks that don't run Red or Blue it's a stellar enabler. And RUG decks could easily run all three in varying amounts depending on the focus of the deck.
*There ARE some decks where you clearly will not want this card even if you have some graveyard shenanigans going on. Most notably in the current meta is in Birthing Pod decks. The deck thrives on being able to select the right creature at the right time and being able to properly ramp up to each consecutive CMC. Accidentally putting the Acidic Slime you desperately need to destroy your opponent's Phyrexian Metamorph before podding into your Sun Titan would be absolutely disastrous. Same goes for any deck that's reliant on tutors to fetch particular answers, since they tend to run only a few of each answer. Also of note are formats like Vintage, where you may discard a precious, essential restricted card that you have 20 ways of searching but no or few ways of retrieving from your graveyard.