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I had a peculiar fondness for this card ever since I first saw its photo in an Inquest magazine all those years ago, but it wasn't until recently that I actually tried playing with it.

Somewhere between Show and Tell and
Incoming!: Eureka.

Its splashy ability... its peculiar art... its bizarre, real-world Einstein reference... what's not to love?

Its younger brother Hypergenesis has seen some tournament play, but I do not believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) that Eureka itself ever has.  This may be why it's going for only 0.40 tix.

Like I said in the teaser, there are much more creative options than using Eureka to drop your Progenitus and Debtors' Knell and Darksteel Colossus.  If that's what you like, I won't stand in your way, but I do want to point out a few other strategies that exist:

1. Dropping cards that kill what your opponent is dropping.  Nekrataal-style cards.  Indrik Stomphowler, Hoverguard Sweepers, et cetera.  There's a ton in this category.
2. Dropping cards that steal what your opponent is dropping.  Sower of Temptation, Yavimaya's Embrace, and so on.  Again, there are many.
3. Making sure your opponent has nothing to drop.  Before you cast Eureka, play a Coercion.  Or a Wit's End.  That way, you will be the only one to reap its benefits.
4. Blowing up the world.  Use the Eureka to trick your opponent into dropping all of his good stuff.  Then, as the last card you drop, play a Scourglass.  (And of course, the things you dropped yourself were chosen to better survive the Scourglass than your opponent's can.)
5. Using it after massive card draw.  If you were to hypothetically play an avatar that gives you a +3 starting handsize... and then use it to flip your Jushi Apprentice... and then use him to go from 9 cards in hand to 18 cards in hand...... casting a Eureka at that particular moment might not be the worst thing you could do.
6. Dropping combos.  Simultaneously play an Enchanted Evening and a Root Greevil.  Or a Tsabo Tavoc and Leyline of Singularity.  You get the idea.
7. Using it to cheat a Phage the Untouchable into play (aren't I hilarious).

Sounds like we have a lot of options.  Let's get to the decks.

Deck 1 Ashling, the Extinguisher

Be careful: when it says "only once," it doesn't mean "only once per turn."  It means "only once per game"!

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This avatar of course fits in nicely with strategy #4 above: blowing up the world.  In case you're a skimmer, we're going to use Eureka to get our opponent's best stuff into play, and then activate our avatar to destroy all of it.

Since we are planning on using the avatar's ability, let's pick some cards that can survive it.  Such as:

• Regeneration.  River Boa, Ancient Silverback, and so on.
• Indestructible.  Spearbreaker Behemoth, Darksteel Gargoyle, and the like.
• Persist.  Woodfall Primus, Scuzzback Marauders, &c.  They'll also be aided by Heartmender and River Kelpie.
• Suspend.  If you suspend an Errant Ephemeron on turn two, he'll arrive just after that Turn Five avatar activation.  (A word of caution, though: don't try to run Aeon Chronicler.  Eureka decks can't really rely on having full hands all the time!)

Curving into that 4-mana Eureka, and then following it with a 5-mana avatar activation, is very important.  So let's use some acceleration to push both of those into a turn earlier.  We'll want to use permanents (not cards like Rampant Growth) so they're themselves droppable with a Eureka if that comes up.  I'm picking Sakura-Tribe Elder and Simic Signet, the former of which is doubly good because the mana it makes isn't destroyed by your avatar.

Speaking of permanents, it's probably better here to run Seal of Primordium than Naturalize for that same reason.

Delay is another card I like in this deck for the early game, as it pushes the opponent's spell into such a time when you can afford to activate your avatar.  It ended up being the only nonpermanent in the deck!

A late addition to the deck was 4x Bottled Cloister.  Aside from the obvious, I want to point out its synergy with the (sorcery-speed) permanents theme, as well as with the "accelerate into 4" strategy.

Here's the list.  As always, my decks are intended for casual use and are highly customizable.

Avatar: Ashling, the Extinguisher Land (22): 12 Forest 10 Island Creatures (24): 2 Mire Boa 1 Safehold Elite 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 2 Rendclaw Trow 2 Heartmender 2 Scuzzback Marauders 2 River Kelpie 1 Ancient Silverback 4 Errant Ephemeron 2 Spearbreaker Behemoth 2 Woodfall Primus

Noncreatures (14): 2 Delay 2 Simic Signet 2 Seal of Primordium 4 Bottled Cloister 4 Eureka

Deck 2 Loxodon Hierarch

It got cut off for spatial reasons, but the starting life is actually +12, not +1!

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I've made several different Loxodon decks centered on the premise of casting Threaten, attacking with the opponent's creature, and then sacrificing it to my avatar.  (Slave of Bolas, big deal — I had already been doing that for years!)  It wasn't until I thought of Eureka that my Threaten decks started taking a different direction.

There are no shortage of red cards that mimic what Threaten does.  Which is good, because we'll need much more than just a playset.  Here are some of the many options to choose from:

(A lot, right?  And I didn't even include chaff like Cunning Bandit and Goatnapper.  Or the functionally identical Act of Treason.)

They all have their plusses and minuses, and I trust you to be able to deduce those for yourself without my longwinded explanations, so let's skip to the rest of the deck's strategy.

The artwork clearly shows six goblin children.  How come we only get two tokens?

With all of those red sorceries going around (I ended up making a RG deck, although blue is obviously a viable option as well), Wort, the Raidmother seems like a great idea.  I also like Nucklavee, although playtesting caused me to run fewer and fewer of them until I was down to only a one-of.

Wort also influenced me to run Harmonize instead of the previous deck's Bottled Cloister.  (As a side note, the only cards this deck ended up sharing with the above list are Sakura-Tribe Elder and Woodfall Primus.  Uh, and the Eurekas themselves.)  Anyway, post-Eureka, casting a conspire-powered Harmonize to draw six cards is actually a manageable amount that you probably won't have to discard any of.

Since this deck focuses so much on Threatening and then sacrificing our opponent's creatures, I decided not to rely on the Eureka alone to get our opponent's good stuff into play.  I'm also running 4x of Boldwyr Heavyweights.  (It really is fun to watch our opponent search up a Living Hive, all proud of himself — and then steal it, attack him with it, and sacrifice it to our avatar.  While also attacking with an 8/8 trample.)

I also experimented with Tempting Wurm, as it seemed perfect for this strategy... but... it wasn't.  Aside from my opponent dropping way more than I was able to steal, he was also putting his lands into play, accelerating way past what I was able to keep up with.  The Wurm was good to cast in the mid- and late games, when the opponent didn't have as big a hand, and their landcount wasn't as relevant, but by then, what's the point of saving mana to cast a vanilla 5/5?

Here's the list.  Casual and customizable etc.

Avatar: Loxodon Hierarch Land (23): 12 Forest 11 Mountain Creatures (17): 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 2 Viridian Shaman 4 Boldwyr Heavyweights 2 Wort, the Raidmother 1 Nucklavee 2 Woodfall Primus 2 Bringer of the Red Dawn

Noncreatures (20): 2 Fertile Ground 4 Threaten 3 Act of Treason 2 Disharmony 2 Grab the Reins 3 Harmonize 4 Eureka

Deck 3 Necropotence

 

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Awhile back, I suggested that there were other things to do with the Necropotence avatar than the wisdom strategies I had just finished going over at the time.  Today's deck is such an example.

Aside from just drawing a bunch of cards and then playing them with Eureka, like strategy #5 up top, we're also going to use it to drop some combos, like strategy #6.  Specifically, we're going to run some combos around this guy:

In a decision that will never affect any game in any way, WotC has decided to change Straw Soldiers into a scarecrow.

I know I'm not the first person on the internet, or even on puremtgo.com, to make a Reaper King deck.  But I feel fairly confident I'm the first to make one with this combination of elements.

The idea is, because of the way the rules work, to drop the Reaper King and multiple other scarecrows at the same time, and then use the King's trigger to kill all of those cards our opponent just dropped to the Eureka.

While we're running Scarecrow tribal, we had might as well run the combo-tastic Painter's Servant (which is all the way down to 1 ticket!), name black, and then run some anti-black cards.  A lot of great options exist (just search Gatherer for green cards that mention "black") but my personal favorites here are Spectral Force and Nature's Wrath.  Let's take a closer look at each of them:

In a nostalgic reference to the original Force of Nature artwork, WotC decided to make this guy, too, look like a 4/4.

The Force will make an excellent win-con to supplement our attacking Scarecrows.  He's also one of the very few threats this deck can reliably hardcast (next to an also hardcast Painter's Servant of course) for the games that Eureka doesn't show up.  But trust me, when you draw as many cards as this avatar allows, those games are incredibly incredibly rare.

The Nature's Wrath, if you can get through that wall of text, you'll notice is quite strong after a Painter's Servant.  It goes quite a long way in preventing our opponent from rebuilding after we use Reaper King to nuke all of his stuff.  And its upkeep is non-cumulative, and so is totally manageable.

If you're worried about Nature's Wrath hurting us, remember that by the time it's out we won't need to put much of anything new into play.  We've just finished casting Eureka and destroying our opponent's board.  (Although we do still have the option of hardcasting a scarecrow to trigger the King and then immediately die.  Not so different from how a regular Vindicate works.)

A beating.

Unlike the previous two decks, this one ISN'T going to run mana acceleration.  Here's why.  The Necropotence avatar takes a long time to get going and really put a lot of cards in our hand.  We don't want to rush the Eureka out on the third turn.  We want to cast it on turn five, if not later, when we've drawn lots of extra cards.

We will of course need some ways to stay alive that long.  Nourish is a cheap and fast way to gain life early game.  Tangle and Moment's Peace will turn entire games around.  Lignify is also an all-star in our deck of giant creatures.

(Side note: I tinkered with lifegain like Sun Droplet, Lifegift, Ivory Crane Netsuke, and Phosphorescent Feast, but they all proved too slow for this particular deck.)

As for post-Eureka, when our avatar will be taking 6 or more life from us each turn, we'll need our lifegain to be a little more drastic.  Given all the artifact Scarecrows we're running, Filigree Angel is the perfect choice.  Aided also by our artifact lands, she can easily gain us 15-21 life at once.  Honest.

Another "post-Eureka" thought: although it might feel worrisome to drop your entire hand to the Eureka (what if the opponent has a Wrath?), remember that our avatar will be refilling your hand before that same turn even ends.

Playtesting makes me feel like 10 scarecrows (other than the Reaper King himself) is the right number, but feel free to adjust to your own liking.  I'm running mostly the high-CMC Scarecrows, because the cheap ones are pretty terrible, and since Eureka sort of dodges CC's anyway.  (Remember: with this avatar, we can really rely on drawing into at least one Eureka.)

Here's the list!

Avatar: Necropotence Land (23): 12 Forest 3 Ancient Den 4 Tree of Tales 4 Reliquary Tower Creatures (20): 4 Painter's Servant 2 Wicker Warcrawler 3 Spectral Force 4 Grim Poppet 3 Filigree Angel 4 Reaper King

Noncreatures (17): 4 Nourish 2 Tangle 2 Moment's Peace 3 Lignify 4 Eureka 2 Nature's Wrath

Take that, Progenitus.

See you next time, and have fun with vanguard!