Riada Carta MTG

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Floodwaters enables the return of up to two target creatures to their owner’s hands, potentially clearing the board and disrupting your opponent’s strategy while keeping your hand loaded with options.

Resource Acceleration: Although Floodwaters doesn’t directly accelerate resources, bouncing creatures back to the opponent’s hand can slow down their board development, buying you time to land more lands or cast spells that ramp up your mana.

Instant Speed: As a sorcery, Floodwaters requires strategic planning for the most impactful play, allowing you to reset the board at a crucial moment and possibly swinging the momentum in your favor during your turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Floodwaters demands that players discard two cards to activate its cycling ability, which may lead to a crippling reduction in hand size, particularly in the late game when hand resources are crucial.

Specific Mana Cost: This card’s casting cost is color intensive, requiring not only a significant amount of mana but also that exactly two of it must be blue. This can be restrictive, demanding a heavy commitment to that color within a player’s deck.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a casting cost of six mana, Floodwaters is considered expensive for its temporary inconvenience of returning only two creatures to their owner’s hand. In a game where tempo is key, alternative cards with lower mana costs or permanent solutions might be more cost-effective.

Reasons to Include Floodwaters in Your Collection

Versatility: Floodwaters provides a dynamic approach in controlling the battlefield by bouncing creatures to your opponent’s hand. This makes it useful in various blue or control-centric decks that aim to stall and maintain tempo.

Combo Potential: This card synergizes with strategies that punish or capitalize on returning creatures to the hand. It enables powerful combinations with cards that benefit from casting spells or have the cycling mechanic themselves.

Meta-Relevance: In a game dominated by creature-based strategies, Floodwaters can serve as an essential tool to disrupt your opponent’s board presence, making it a card to consider in a shifting meta.

How to beat

Floodwaters serves as a tempo card in the MTG blue arsenal, disrupting opponents by returning up to two creatures to their owner’s hands. Its versatility can be a challenge, yet there are several strategies to mitigate its impact. The key is to prioritize low mana creatures or those with beneficial enter-the-battlefield effects, ensuring that any returns to your hand are not detrimental but potentially advantageous. Additionally, employing instant-speed spells or abilities that can counter non-creature spells could effectively neutralize Floodwaters before it can influence the game. This way, the setback this card can impose becomes a mere ripple in your strategic plan.

Furthermore, maintaining a diverse battlefield with creatures that possess hexproof or protection against blue spells shields them from targeted effects like Floodwaters. Another efficient tactic is to keep mana available for re-summoning creatures after Floodwaters is cast, reducing the tempo loss. Remember, the casting cost of Floodwaters is relatively high, so time is on your side. Applying these tactics will help you maintain the upper hand and diminish the potential disruption of this particular blue spell.