When I was writing my preview of Baloth Woodcrashers I was aware of Oracle of Mul Daya via unofficial spoiler pages but since I try to only talk about cards that are on the official Zendikar Visual Spoiler on the mothership I could only reference it obliquely. Sure enough the Oracle was added to the rapidly expanding official page that next morning so I will talk about it now in what I hope is first of a series of looks at the cards from the impending release. So what does the future hold for the Oracle?

I love this card; absolutely love it. I am not sure if it will prove to be tournament viable or not (insert obligatory comment about it dying to Lightning Bolt and Doom Blade here) but it is the closest green will ever come to having a high velocity enchantment like Future Sight to tear through your library. If you happen to be in Columbus, Ohio for the Saturday Prerelease I will be looking for a copy of this card to put right into my EDH deck – along with a much harder to find Misty Rainforest. But I can easily see this card being played in decks that are 39 cards smaller as well.

If landfall has any Constructed impact – and I think it will – then this card will provide fuel for that linear. I discussed in the Woodcrashers preview that a card like Knight of the Reliquary allows you up to four landfall activations in one turn if you play a fetch land, activate it, and fetch another fetch land with your Knight. So does the Oracle, provided there is some permutation of two fetch lands between your hand and the top two cards of your deck.

(By the way, in case anyone is still sleeping on Knight of the Reliquary, let me remind you that it did win an Extended Grand Prix toward the end of last season.) Read the rest of this entry »