Yep, as stated above, I think Gnarlwood will be great in that deck. Bauble, Wraith, and Probe make delirium trivially easy to hit there. They’ll probably keep Nacatl and just cut Lynx, though.

I think people should buy their Baubles now if they want them and don’t have them. And not just because of Gnarlwood and Traverse—Grim Flayer is super, duper good.

Destructive Revlery is a SB option, but for now my plan against RIP effects is, as you said, to ignore it with one-drops.

Evolution is definitely playable and should at least find a home in certain builds of Chord-style toolbox decks. I can see it making waves in Kiki-Chord, for example, since they can sacrifice Finks to go into either Angel or Kiki-Jiki.

Players only have so many Remands, not to mention the card is terrible against the format’s big aggro three (Infect, Affinity, Burn). A rise in Remand strategies could allow those decks to claw back some metagame shares from Bolt-based midrange and Hierarch decks.

On another note, would you call evolution playable when remand exists and chord is an option? The only time I see evolution winning out is if you are sacking a big creature to it to get something like a craterhoof. I could see something going on with the primordial command decks that play sprawl. I like the similarity to pod, but I think part of what made that card good was that it was a permanent, not a one and done card.

I think whispers of emrakul, dryad, escalate cards, and hanweir battlements have the best chance of making an impact on modern.

Very possible. I have never liked Steppe Lynx in that deck, which I think is too easy to disrupt with a few Bolts at the right time. I’ve found they usually draw Lynx at the wrong time when faced with disruption. Dryad makes the deck much more consistent, as they’re already in Bauble/Probe/Wraith/fetchland.

Could Gnarlwood Dryad be an upgrade to the Steppe Lynx/Kird Ape slot in Death’s Shadow Zoo? May be worth adding Bauble and/or Tarfire to support it, but maybe not.

I actually tried it in this shell and came to the same conclusion as before Gnarlwood was spoiled: it’s either a worse Zoo or a worse Monkey Grow. I don’t think this kind of prowess deck is focused enough to make it in Modern.

Agreed. The Allosaurus variants I’ve been trying have been a lot less consistent than goodstuff midrange piles that splash an Evolution package to abuse with delve.

The only part about that scenario that’s “incredibly specific” is having EldEv and Rider in the opener together. The dork is optional (doing this on 3 is still strong), and the rest is just “have cards of your deck’s main color somewhere in your first 7-9 cards of the game” and “not be mana screwed”. All you need for this scenario is a generically keepable hand that has two specific cards in it. There would also be games where you kept a “normal” hand with a plan for a “normal” use of EldEv, then topdeck Rider in any of your first few draw steps, and go “Oops, free haymaker!”

Compare to Amulet Bloom: it needed Amulet of Vigor and Summer Bloom, just like the above needs Rider and EldEv. So far, they’re even. Then where the above needs “three mana sources”, Bloom needed specific types of lands that only made up a portion of the manabase. Advantage: EldEv/Rider. Where the above needs “green cards in a green deck”, Bloom needed to specifically have one of their win conditions. Advantage: EldEv/Rider (again).

I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the Rider/EldEv combo is actually *less* specific than one that was deemed too powerful. And that’s just the combo: there’s still delve fatties and so forth, so it’s not like such a deck would crumble if it doesn’t find the combo.

Granted, I’m just some internet noob, so maybe I’m way off base. But it doesn’t look like a Magical Christmas Land scenario to me.

I’m not super nervous about a T2 combo that requires Evolution, Rider, a dork/Sprawl in play, two extra green cards to pitch, and two lands to go on curve. That’s an incredibly specific series of draws; Griselbrand strategies are significantly more consistent and those decks aren’t even Tier 3 currently.

Evolution is almost definitely playable, but this particular combo doesn’t have me worried. It just seems like another powerful Modern strategy along with all the rest. It turns out if you take any existing Tier 1 strategy, remove it from the format, and then reintroduce it again, we can easily make a rhetorical case for how ridiculously broken that deck is. And yet, all those decks coexist pretty nicely.

When I first saw Eldritch Evolution, I thought, “Hey, cool, that could be fun.”

Then I thought of actual scenarios, and got pretty excited.

Then I saw one or two other folks’ scenarios, and got even more excited.

Then I saw even more scenarios, and started to get worried. I mean, T1 mana dork, T2 Allosaurus Rider –> Evolution –> Any 9-drop of your choice? Remember, they can’t even Bolt the Rider prior to you casting EldEvolution, as long as you don’t try to do something else in between.

Kinda has me worried.

Thanks! Since Eldritch Evolution was spoiled, I’ve also been brewing with delve creatures. Right now I feel a Temur shell is best, since it interacts so efficiently with the field (using Bolt, Pyroclasm, Moon, etc.). I tried fitting Traverse into the shell, but it clashes with the delve creatures too much. I don’t love combining Evolve with emerge yet. We just haven’t seen enough good emerge cards to warrant it, and we have plenty of great creatures to go into with a humble Hooting Mandrills (Sundering Titan, Griselbrand).