Return Upon the Tide MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Return Upon the Tide stimulates card advantage by enabling you to bring a creature card from your graveyard straight to the battlefield. This action effectively recovers a significant resource, which can pivot the state of play in your favor especially if you’re returning a high-value creature.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly providing mana, the card’s ability to reanimate a creature can be seen as a form of acceleration as it bypasses the mana cost of casting that creature from your hand, allowing you to use your mana elsewhere. This is particularly relevant when it targets creatures with high mana costs, presenting a form of indirect resource savings.

Instant Speed: Although Return Upon the Tide is played at sorcery speed, the benefit can be akin to instant speed effects as it immediately affects the board state upon resolution. It allows you to wait until your main phase to cast it, keeping mana open for other plays during your opponent’s turn, thereby adding a strategic layer to gameplay. Plus, it can be a surprise element post-combat, reviving a fallen creature to be ready for action on your next turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: In the quest to maximize graveyard synergy, Return Upon the Tide demands a creature card from your hand as part of the cost. This can backfire if your hand is already depleted or you’re holding onto key creatures for later play.

Specific Mana Cost: Demanding two black mana, this card cannot be splashed easily into multi-colored decks, restricting its compatibility and potentially clashing with your deck’s mana curve.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a cost of five mana, Return Upon the Tide might hinder your early-game momentum. Despite its potential to bring back powerful creatures, the high mana investment can often be costly when facing faster, more aggressive decks.

Reasons to Include Return Upon the Tide in Your Collection

Versatility: Return Upon the Tide offers immense flexibility, easily slotting into decks that take advantage of graveyard mechanics or are themed around Elves. Its ability to return a creature card from the graveyard to the battlefield ensures that key pieces of your strategy can make a comeback even after being disrupted.

Combo Potential: This card has excellent synergy with decks that focus on sacrifice and recursion. It can act as a powerful engine in combos, bringing back crucial combo pieces while also leaving behind an Elf token that can be used for convoke, fodder for sacrifice, or even additional mana ramping.

Meta-Relevance: In a meta where disruption and removal are prevalent, the capacity to recur from the graveyard is incredibly valuable. Return Upon the Tide ensures resilience against control decks and maintains pressure by recurring threats, making it a solid choice in various competitive settings.

How to Beat

When facing ‘Return Upon the Tide’ in Magic: The Gathering, understanding its mechanics is crucial for developing counterstrategies. This sorcery card, often found in black decks, can be particularly troublesome because it not only returns a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield but if it’s an Elf, it creates two Elf tokens as well. This potential swing in board presence is something to anticipate when playing against black-green Elf decks.

The key to mitigating the impact of ‘Return Upon the Tide’ lies in strategic graveyard management. Employing cards that exile from the graveyard, such as ‘Scavenging Ooze’ or ‘Bojuka Bog’, disrupts your opponent’s plans before they can execute the spell effectively. Similarly, countering it directly with ‘Negate’ or ‘Dovin’s Veto’ can nullify the threat entirely. Moreover, using cards that limit the types of creatures that can be reanimated, like ‘Grafdigger’s Cage’, will help maintain control over the board state.

Navigating around ‘Return Upon the Tide’ calls for a blend of preventive measures and timely responses. Monitoring graveyards and being ready with the right answers are the linchpins to overcome the advantages that the card extends to your opponent. Always be one step ahead, and the tide will turn in your favor.

BurnMana Recommendations

The intricate dance of MTG deck building thrives on seizing every advantage, including leveraging the dark arts of reanimation. Return Upon the Tide shines in decks sculpted to harness graveyard potential, particularly in those insidious black-green Elf combinations. With its capability to alter the battlefield’s power dynamics, this card is a formidable asset in any collection. Navigate the dense thicket of MTG strategies with insight, and see your graveyard not as a collection of defeats but as a springboard for triumph. Delve deeper into the art of deck optimization and maintain a competitive edge with our in-depth guidance. Explore with us and harness the full potential of your MTG arsenal.