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Back in the day of the true duel lands basic lands were something that was almost looked down upon. There was simply no good reason not to have a three color deck that used twelve dual lands, 4 mishras factories, four strip mines and perhaps filled out with one or two basic lands. Because of this one of the most effective sideboard cards of that age was the blood moon, a very simple red card that could completely shut down decks by turning all non basic lands into mountains. Combine this with a handful of creatures that had mountain walk and you could get some near automatic victories, or at least limit the opponent to playing only one color of his three color deck.

In modern days dual lands have been toned back enough that people now use more basic lands but the idea is still useful but instead of blood moon we have Magus of the Moon. A rare human wizard from the Future Sight expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs one red and two colorless to put into play and is a 2/2 creature with the ability of turning all non basic lands into mountains.

Aside from the fact that people are a bit more likely to be using basic lands in modern magic the gathering formats there is a second reason that this card is not as strong as blood moon. This is because in general red has no good enchantment removal but it has good creature removal. What this means is that when you played blood moon, unless your opponent played Nevinyral's Disk he was likely to be in trouble but now if he plays red he can simply lighting bolt the magus.

That said people still play with a great many non basic land and there are still plenty of creatures with mountain walk in the game of magic and so even if you are not able to shut down an opponent completely you can make it much harder for them to cast spells and much harder to block with a single creature and while that creature may be killed any creature can be killed.

I love the flavor of the magus cards and magus of the moon replicates a card that I used many times in the past to completely shut down opponent's tournament level decks so it is something I can hardly scoff at even if it isn't quite as powerful.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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