Landed Gentry

Technically, it all starts with Noble Templar or Shoreline Ranger , as they’re earlier in the set, but Twisted Abomination was the common landcycling card you most wanted to see in your pack of Scourge , to the extent that it was brought back in Time Spiral ’s Timeshifted bonus sheet.

In a block with Dripping Dead and Zombie Brute , Twisted Abomination was an acceptable top-end body as a Regenerating 5/3. It ate Morphs and could block and Regenerate from even the most threatening creatures in Onslaught Block. It was good on turn two, good on turn six, and great on turn seven and has been reprinted a dozen times, including half a dozen times for Limited formats. You can’t say the same for Shoreline Ranger .

The best landcycling card wasn’t Twisted Abomination , of course, but Eternal Dragon , a control card reminiscent of Thawing Glaciers in its implacable and grinding advantage. Control decks, like Julien Nuijten’s World Championship 2004 Astral Slide deck , would cycle it early and then return it to their hand in the mid-game, repeating this loop until they had all the mana they needed to return and cast Eternal Dragon .