Overwhelming Splendor MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 3 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost8
RarityMythic
TypeEnchantment — Aura Curse
Abilities Enchant

Key Takeaways

  1. Overwhelming Splendor grants card advantage by countering multiple opponent card abilities with one enchantment.
  2. The enchantment indirectly conserves resources by lessening the need for additional removal spells.
  3. Despite being sorcery-speed, its effect mimics instant-speed advantages, altering board state significantly upon resolution.

Text of card

Enchant player Creatures enchanted player controls lose all abilities and have base power and toughness 1/1. Enchanted player can't activate abilities that aren't mana abilities or loyalty abilities.


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Overwhelming Splendor not only hampers your opponent’s ability to utilize their creatures effectively but also potentially removes any advantages those creatures may have offered. This shift can lead to substantial card advantage as your single enchantment counters multiple aspects of your opponent’s strategy.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly providing mana, Overwhelming Splendor can indirectly accelerate your resources. By nullifying the abilities of your opponent’s creatures, you reduce the need for removal spells. This allows you to preserve those spells in hand, effectively giving you more resources for future turns.

Instant Speed: Though Overwhelming Splendor is a sorcery-speed enchantment, its impact is akin to a sudden shift in board state that one might associate with instant-speed interaction. Once resolved, it immediately imposes restrictions on your opponent’s board, giving you a pseudo-instant speed advantage as they are forced to adapt to the new limitations.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: While Overwhelming Splendor does not have a traditional discard requirement, it does necessitate a substantial setup either through ramping mana sources or finding ways to cheat it onto the battlefield, which can be resource intensive and slow to achieve.

Specific Mana Cost: This enchantment comes with a heavy white color commitment, requiring it to be cast with a whopping eight white mana. This can be difficult for multicolored decks to manage and may prevent the card from being played outside of mono-white or heavily white-focused builds.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Four white and four colorless mana points make for a challenging casting cost. Such a high cost can make the card impractical especially when considering the pace of most matches and the availability of other enchantments or cards that can provide powerful, game-altering effects sooner and with less investment.


Reasons to Include Overwhelming Splendor in Your Collection

Versatility: Overwhelming Splendor isn’t just a crowd-pleaser in enchantment-focused builds, it’s a versatile control element for any deck looking to shut down opponents’ creature strategies. Its aura curse single-handedly transforms the battlefield, making it a prime candidate for decks aiming to maintain dominance.

Combo Potential: As a high-impact card, it pairs well with ramp mechanisms to hit the battlefield unexpectedly early, or in conjunction with other curse spells to create a lockdown effect. It can also combo with cards that allow you to put enchantments directly onto the battlefield, bypassing its steep mana cost.

Meta-Relevance: In a game environment teeming with creature-heavy decks, Overwhelming Splendor rises as a counter-play champion. By hindering the abilities and effectiveness of your opponents’ creatures, it significantly alters the tempo of the game in your favor, potentially disrupting popular meta-game strategies.


How to beat

Overwhelming Splendor is a potent enchantment that can cripple an opponent’s board by nerfing their creatures and disabling their activated abilities. Tackling this card requires foresight and strategy, as once it hits the battlefield, recovery options become limited. Countermeasures involve maintaining a robust hand with enchantment removal spells or utilizing abilities to shuffle it back into the library. Cards like Disenchant or Back to Nature can deal with it directly, whereas Krosan Grip offers additional security against counterplay.

Hexproof protection is vital as well. By outfitting your creatures or yourself with hexproof, you render Overwhelming Splendor null, as it requires a target upon casting. Leyline of Sanctity is an example of a preemptive defense that can be established from your game’s start. It’s also beneficial to diversify your deck with a range of threats, ensuring that even a single devastating blow like Overwhelming Splendor doesn’t mean the end of your game plan.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of Overwhelming Splendor and preparing accordingly will define your success rate against it. Being equipped to deal with enchantments, maintaining a varied threat profile, and using hexproof to your advantage are key components in overcoming this powerful control card.


BurnMana Recommendations

Mastering the art of MTG is a quest of skill and knowledge, and Overwhelming Splendor serves as a testament to this journey. As a card with nuanced play and undeniable impact, it deserves careful consideration for your deck, especially if control and strategy are at the core of your playstyle. Whether you’re overpowering foes with its enchantment might or learning how to deftly skirt its constraints, this card is a noteworthy addition to your arsenal. Dive deeper into the complex world of MTG with us and discover how Overwhelming Splendor can elevate your game. Expand your collection and expertise—your path to supremacy awaits.


Cards like Overwhelming Splendor

In the realm of control enchantments within Magic: The Gathering, Overwhelming Splendor is a unique powerhouse, chiefly when likened to similar effects. It draws a parallel to cards like Curse of Death’s Hold which also diminishes an opponent’s creatures abilities, yet Overwhelming Splendor pushes this concept to the extreme by reducing all the affected player’s creatures to 1/1 with no abilities. Another cousin in this niche is Humility, which globally nullifies all creature powers and stat enhancements, though it’s symmetric and affects all creatures on the board.

Closer in effect, we have the aura Curse of Exhaustion. While its impact is more subtle, restricting opponents to one spell per turn, Overwhelming Splendor extends its oppressive reach, impacting abilities and even preventing affected players from activating loyalty abilities of planeswalkers. Looking at Ixalan’s Binding, another card with a similar vein of restrictive enchantments, it merely exiles a single target and prohibits the casting of cards with the same name. It’s clear that Overwhelming Splendor stands apart by blanketing a single player’s field with limitations, whereas others tend to be more surgical or equal in their application.

When comparing Overwhelming Splendor to its peers, it becomes evident that for players seeking to impose a comprehensive stranglehold on an opponent, this card is a formidable choice. Its sweeping and unilateral effect on key game mechanics places it in a league of its own within enchantments in Magic: The Gathering.

Curse of Death's Hold - MTG Card versions
Humility - MTG Card versions
Curse of Exhaustion - MTG Card versions
Ixalan's Binding - MTG Card versions
Curse of Death's Hold - Innistrad (ISD)
Humility - Tempest (TMP)
Curse of Exhaustion - Dark Ascension (DKA)
Ixalan's Binding - Ixalan (XLN)

Cards similar to Overwhelming Splendor by color, type and mana cost

Divine Intervention - MTG Card versions
Legion Loyalty - MTG Card versions
Divine Intervention - Masters Edition III (ME3)
Legion Loyalty - Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate (CLB)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Overwhelming Splendor MTG card by a specific set like Hour of Devastation and Hour of Devastation Promos, 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 Overwhelming Splendor and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Overwhelming Splendor Magic the Gathering card was released in 3 different sets between 2017-07-14 and 2020-08-13. Illustrated by Richard Wright.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12017-07-14Hour of DevastationHOU 192015normalblackRichard Wright
22017-07-15Hour of Devastation PromosPHOU 19s2015normalblackRichard Wright
32020-08-13Amonkhet RemasteredAKR 302015normalblackRichard Wright

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Overwhelming Splendor has restrictions

FormatLegality
HistoricbrawlLegal
HistoricLegal
LegacyLegal
OathbreakerLegal
GladiatorLegal
PioneerLegal
CommanderLegal
ModernLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
ExplorerLegal
PennyLegal
TimelessLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Overwhelming Splendor card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

DateText
2017-07-14 Activated abilities contain a colon. They’re generally written “
-ost:
-ffect].” Some keyword abilities (such as equip and eternalize) are activated abilities and will have colons in their reminder text. Triggered abilities (starting with “when,” “whenever,” or “at”) of noncreature permanents are unaffected by the last ability of Overwhelming Splendor.
2017-07-14 An activated mana ability is one that produces mana as it resolves, not one that costs mana to activate. A loyalty ability is an ability of a planeswalker whose cost specifies how many loyalty counters to give or remove.
2017-07-14 Effects that modify a creature’s power and/or toughness, such as the effect of Titanic Growth, will apply to the creatures no matter when they started to take effect. The same is true for any counters that change their power and/or toughness.
2017-07-14 If Overwhelming Splendor leaves the battlefield at the same time as a creature enchanted player controls, any “when
-his creature]
-ies or leaves the battlefield]” abilities of that creature won’t trigger.
2017-07-14 If a noncreature permanent becomes a creature, it will lose all abilities it has. However, if the effect that makes that permanent a creature grants it an ability, it will continue to have that ability. For example, the enchanted player’s Riddleform will have flying once it becomes a creature.
2017-07-14 If an effect grants a creature an ability after Overwhelming Splendor has become attached to its controller, that creature won’t lose that ability.
2017-07-14 Overwhelming Splendor overwrites all previous effects that set a creature’s base power and toughness to specific values. Any power- or toughness-setting effects that start to apply to a creature after Overwhelming Splendor becomes attached to its controller will overwrite this effect. For example, the enchanted player’s Riddleform will become a 3/3 creature if player casts a noncreature spell.
2017-07-14 While the enchanted player can still activate mana abilities and loyalty abilities, creatures that player controls won’t normally have any of those abilities to be activated.
2017-09-29 If a creature enters the battlefield under enchanted player’s control, any “when
-his creature] enters the battlefield” abilities of that creature won’t trigger. Any “as
-his creature] enters the battlefield” or “
-his creature] enters the battlefield with” abilities won’t be applied. This is a change from previous rulings.

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