Sift Through Sands - Isu the Abominable and Uril, the Miststalker

Isu the Abominable

by Victor Adame

Sift Through Snow

Hello, and welcome to this week's Sift Through Sands, an article series about examining card packages that work in two different decks with varying strategies.

Recently, the Magic community received spoilers for the upcoming Jumpstart 2022 set, revealing Goblin and Snow themes, among others to be revealed. Isu the Abominable

Our Picks

See what I mean? Uril could easily be a Yeti. I digress though.

These commanders are straightforward signposts that tell us that we need to be running a lot of snow cards and a lot of Auras, with the payoff being big beaters that can finish the game. They both work incrementally, which can be deceptive to opponents who may not work quickly to stop them from snowballing (ha ha). First, let's start with our Isu list.

Playing Isu

Snow decks are often land-matters decks, and that is true of our Isu list. Consistently increasing the amount of snow permanents we have in play is essential to the deck, and cards like Ice-Fang Coatl

Maintaining our ability to play snow permanents is important, as Isu will likely be a removal target if it gets bigger. Soothsaying

With Isu and many snow permanents in play, flicker effects, like Blizzard Strix

Isu leads a very straightforward snow payoff deck, but bringing snow to an Aura deck proved to be more of a challenge. Let's look at our Uril list!

Setting up support and defense for Uril to be successful is our gameplan early on. Sythis, Harvest's Hand

With Uril in play, our Auras become deadly, as Eternal Warrior

But what about snow? Most of our snow payoffs here are utility pieces, providing us more mana (with the low-costed-but-balanced Winter's Night

All this snow needs support! Let's take a look at the cards that made in into both decks.

Snow cards tend to do little on their own, but in their element they provide aggressively costed effects. Blessing of Frost

Cold Outro

Hope everyone enjoyed these cool decks! I'd love to hear about your own experiences with snow. Do you think that it's uninteresting, or is there a direction you'd like to see snow cards go? Even better, do you like the Ice Age set as much as I do? Let me know in the comments and I will see you next time.