Posted in: Card Games, Games, Magic: The Gathering, Tabletop, Wizards of the Coast | Tagged: magic, Magic: The Gathering, Mishra, MTG, MTGBRO, preview, The Brother's War, Urza, wizards of the coast, WotC

Magic: The Gathering: The Brothers' War Exclusive Preview Card

Hello and welcome, all players, collectors, and fans of Magic: The Gathering, the premier collectible trading card game designed, developed, and produced by Wizards of the Coast! Today, we are excited to share a special exclusive preview card for The Brothers' War, the next upcoming expansion set for Magic, courtesy of Wizards of the Coast. And, with it, perhaps we can almost guarantee that the card will shake Standard up a bit more in its color than we have seen in recent premier sets.

This card has absolutely shaken Standard up in the past, because, in actuality, this card is a reprint. However, despite being its first reprint in a premier set (or Standard-legal set, for those who aren't as attuned to the terminology yet), we could almost go out on a limb and say it's shaken up similar formats even further back, as it is also an homage to another card from way back in the day. For a frame of reference, I've been playing Magic: The Gathering since 2001, and this card's effect predates even that origin story.

So, with all of that out of the way, let us re-introduce you all to Fauna Shaman.

Fauna Shaman is itself a card that pays homage to Survival of the Fittest, a card from Exodus that does the same thing but doesn't require being tapped to activate. It seems worthy of mention that Fauna Shaman is, in addition to being a once-per-round copy of Survival, an Elf Shaman, meaning that it could be very good in Elf strategies. That's completely skirting around the notion that the card is a known treasure in reanimator decks that use green. These include tried-and-true Commander decks led by the likes of Meren of Clan Nel Toth, Karador, Ghost Chieftain, Tayam, Luminous Enigma, and Muldrotha, the Gravetide. I've even made good use of it in a Nethroi, Apex of Death deck where Survival of the Fittest wasn't accessible to me as I had Umori, the Collector in it as my companion (using only creatures to fulfill the companion requirement). Of further note is the propensity for Fauna Shaman to allow the binning of unearth creatures which will inevitably be making a comeback in The Brothers' War.

But it's important to keep in mind that Fauna Shaman is useful beyond reanimator strategies no matter what, as she can easily make your deck into a toolbox situation, allowing you to choose whatever creature you need at the time, and simply take it from your library. Need a bunch of blockers? Grab a Hornet Queen and all of her little bee token minions. Need to destroy some artifacts or enchantments? There's a Bane of Progress ready for tutoring. Wanna close out a game? Fauna Shaman is right there for you to get your Craterhoof Behemoth as you see fit. The possibilities at that point are as numerous as the creature cards in your library.

But that's enough out of us. What do you think about a Fauna Shaman reprint in The Brothers' War? Is this a fitting addition to this next set for Magic: The Gathering? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and thank you again to Wizards of the Coast for providing this free preview card!

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