Forsaken Drifters MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Forsaken Drifters brings card advantage through its graveyard filling ability. When it dies, it mills four cards into your graveyard, potentially setting up future plays and synergies.

Resource Acceleration: Though not directly providing mana, the ability to mill cards like “Creatures or Lands” can indirectly lead to resource acceleration by enabling delve or threshold mechanics.

Instant Speed: While Forsaken Drifters itself isn’t an instant, it allows you to play at instant speed by stocking your graveyard quickly. This can be crucial for strategies relying on cards with flashback or other abilities that you can activate from the graveyard during either player’s turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Forsaken Drifters demands that when it dies, you have to put the top four cards of your library into your graveyard. This self-milling could unwittingly discard crucial spells or creatures you would prefer to draw during crucial moments of gameplay.

Specific Mana Cost: Requiring both black mana and generic mana, this card fits primarily into black-centered or graveyard-focused decks. Its specific mana cost can be challenging for multicolored decks that may not always have the necessary black mana available when needed.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a casting cost of four mana for a 4/2 creature, Forsaken Drifters might not provide the best value per mana spent, especially when there are more potent creatures or impactful cards available at the same or lower mana cost.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Forsaken Drifters offers a unique blend of graveyard-filling and creature presence, making it easy to include in various decks that capitalize on large graveyards like those in reanimator or delve strategies.

Combo Potential: With its ability to self-mill, this card pairs well with abilities that trigger upon creatures entering the graveyard, setting up powerful synergies that can shift the tide of gameplay.

Meta-Relevance: In an environment where graveyard manipulation is key, Forsaken Drifters becomes a potent asset, enabling strategies that require a stocked graveyard to function efficiently and outmaneuver opponents.

How to beat

Forsaken Drifters represents an intriguing challenge on the battlefield with its sizable body and graveyard synergies. As a player facing off against this creature, your best strategy is to lean on instant-speed removal. By employing spells that can eliminate it on the spot, you minimize the impact of its ability. Consider spells like Path to Exile or Rapid Hybridization, which can dispatch the Drifters before their death-trigger effect becomes an issue. It’s also wise to limit the effectiveness of any graveyard interactions they might enable.

Controlling the board is another effective approach. Board wipes that clear multiple threats can handle the Drifters efficiently. This strategy is particularly useful as it bypasses the death-triggered ability, keeping your opponent’s graveyard bereft of additional creature cards that could fuel their strategy. Wrath of God or Damnation are perfect examples of powerful spells suited for this task.

Avoiding specific combat situations can also be key. Since Forsaken Drifters isn’t known for its speed, faster decks could take advantage and pressure the opponent early on. Employing creatures with flying or other evasion abilities can also circumvent the Drifters, hitting your opponent where they’re vulnerable while they set up their board.

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