Hidden Retreat MTG Card
| Mana cost | |
| Converted mana cost | 3 |
| Rarity | Rare |
| Type | Enchantment |
| Released | 1998-03-02 |
| Set symbol | |
| Set name | Stronghold |
| Set code | STH |
| Number | 6 |
| Frame | 1997 |
| Layout | Normal |
| Border | Black |
| Illustred by | Terese Nielsen |
Key Takeaways
- Instant-speed land play with Hidden Retreat enables unexpected moves, amping up in-game strategy.
- Discarding for Hidden Retreat’s effect can be costly without careful hand management.
- Hidden Retreat synergizes well with landfall and top-deck strategies for clever combos.
Text of card
Choose a card in your hand and put it on top of your library: Prevent all damage from an instant or sorcery. (Treat further damage from that source normally.)
After an hour in the hidey-hole, Squee seriously pondered the advantages of danger over boredom.
Card Pros
Card Advantage: Hidden Retreat shines in card advantage by potentially putting additional land cards in play, helping you keep up or outpace your opponent’s board development.
Resource Acceleration: This card’s ability to place a land onto the battlefield tapped can act as a form of acceleration, enabling more influential plays sooner than the usual land-per-turn rule allows.
Instant Speed: The instant speed nature of Hidden Retreat offers flexibility, allowing players to respond to threats or optimize their mana usage at the end of the opponent’s turn, thus maintaining unpredictability in their strategy.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: Hidden Retreat demands that a player discards a card, presenting a potential setback if your hand is already depleted or if you need to maintain card advantage.
Specific Mana Cost: This card’s casting cost is tied to specific mana colors, necessitating a deck tailored around its mana requirements, which can restrict deck-building flexibility and overall strategy.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: With its substantial mana cost, players might find that Hidden Retreat’s impact on the board state doesn’t justify the investment, especially when compared to other cards with lower costs and similar or superior effects.
Reasons to Include Hidden Retreat in Your Collection
Versatility: Hidden Retreat offers a unique flexibility in how it can be played. This card can quickly become an essential part of decks that aim to control the game until they can play their powerful spells. Its land-fetching ability ensures you’re not missing crucial land drops, making it versatile enough to suit various playstyles.
Combo Potential: The synergy with landfall abilities is where Hidden Retreat shines, enabling explosive turns with multiple triggers. In addition, its capability to manipulate the top of the library enhances deck strategies that capitalize on knowing the next draw. This synergy can be a game-changer allowing for intricate combos to unfold.
Meta-Relevance: In a metagame that rewards strategic setup and incremental advantages, Hidden Retreat could provide the edge needed. Its interaction with the top of the library and ability to set future plays makes it invaluable in matches that often pivot on consistently making land drops and maximizing every card advantage.
How to Beat
Hidden Retreat is a nuanced part of any deck building strategy within Magic: The Gathering. As a card that revolves around landfall mechanics, it offers a unique method of cheat-casting nonland cards from your hand. Understanding the triggers and responses associated with landfall is key when trying to counter this card. One effective method is land destruction or land bounce, which disrupts the necessary land plays to activate Hidden Retreat’s ability.
Countermeasures such as instant speed removal or counterspells can effectively handle the threats played for free with Hidden Retreat, ensuring they don’t impact the board state. Cards like Aether Gust can remove the key lands or bounce the nonland threats back to the opponent’s hand, negating the advantage generated. Another tactic involves applying pressure to deplete the opponent’s hand, such as using discard spells to ensure they don’t retain valuable cards to play off Hidden Retreat’s trigger.
Ultimately, to effectively counter Hidden Retreat in a game of Magic: The Gathering, one must focus on controlling the land base, maintaining hand disruption, and being ready with instant speed interactions to offset the card’s powerful landfall abilities.
Cards like Hidden Retreat
Hidden Retreat is a unique addition to the myriad of enchantments available within Magic: The Gathering. It echoes similarities to other enchantments that manipulate land such as Abundant Growth, which also offers a card draw in addition to its primary ability to enable any land to produce a variety of mana colors. However, Hidden Retreat takes a different approach by rewarding players who play multiple lands in a turn, as opposed to Abundant Growth’s one-time effect when hitting the field.
Another card that resonates with the theme of Hidden Retreat is Exploration. Exploration allows players to play an additional land on each of their turns, thus directly complimenting the multi-land playing strategy that Hidden Retreat could benefit from. Though Exploration doesn’t provide card draw itself, the synergy between these two could be highly valuable in a deck built around land play.
In assessing Hidden Retreat alongside these other enchantments, it holds a niche position. It potentially offers a greater reward but requires a more strategic setup to maximize its benefit, catering to Magic: The Gathering players who favor decks focusing on land dynamics over straightforward gameplay.
Cards similar to Hidden Retreat by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Hidden Retreat MTG card by a specific set like Stronghold, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.
For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.
Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.
Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Hidden Retreat and other MTG cards:
- eBay
- TCG Player
- Card Kingdom
- Card Market
- Star City Games
- CoolStuffInc
- MTG Mint Card
- Hareruya
- Troll and Toad
- ABU Games
- Card Hoarder Magic Online
- MTGO Traders Magic Online
See MTG Products
Legalities
Magic the Gathering formats where Hidden Retreat has restrictions
| Format | Legality |
|---|---|
| Commander | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Premodern | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
| Duel | Legal |
| Predh | Legal |
| Penny | Legal |
Rules and information
The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Hidden Retreat card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2004-10-04 | This can be used on damage to a creature, player, or planeswalker. |
| 2004-10-04 | This can be used on instant or sorcery spells on the stack, but not on abilities. |
