So. This fellow and I have a really love-hate relationship.
For starters, the artwork is extremely detailed and stylistic; but for whatever reason it just weirds me right out. Then take the effect. Basically, he taps to make any card in your hand blue Harrow. Blue is totally the color of landshaping, and the notion of making any card in your hand something else is SUPER blue flavour (and I wish they’d do it more!). BUT. Harrow is the quintessential green card. Like, THE green card, not counting Giant Growth or Bears I suppose. I am thus conflicted on whether I feel like this is in blue flavour or if it’s just an example of blue stealing another colour’s thunder (which is my least favourite thing). Cause, it’s not like blue is overpowered or anything…right?
Regardless, this card isn’t too overpowered, and he’s common(!). I immediately tried throwing him in a pauper blue landscaping deck, but the win condition is unrealistic and the deck fails. The problem here is that even if you can filter and ramp your land to incredible amounts, ultimately you end up topdecking for your lame-o serpent bomb and hoping the opponent doesn’t draw land to replace that which you’ve turned to islands.
And THIS. This is the biggest love-hate aspect of Dreamscape Artist. Secretly, he’s an inherent -1 card advantage. No, not because of the discard in his ability, because like I said he turns that card into Harrow. The card disadvantage is when you play him in the first place! Assuming you start the game with three lands and the Artist, you get him out on the second turn, and on the third turn use his ability. That’s 7 – 3 land – 1 artist + 2 draws – 1 harrow = 5 card in hand. Next turn, assuming you play another land, 5 + 1 draw – land – 1 harrow = 4. You expect to have five cards in your hand after playing two Harrows, but instead you have four.
If you’re dropping the situationally bad cards from your hand (such as extra copies of himself) this can be brilliant land ramp. It’s also important to consider floating mana in this equation, since his land comes into play untapped (!). Just think, that’s (one land on turn one) 1:1, 0:3, 2:3, 4:4, 6:5 if you play a land each of the first five turns. But if you play any other spells out of that, things start looking grim… that’s (six potential spells on turn one) 6:1, 5:2, 4:3, 3:4, 2:5. This means if you use his effect three times, you’ve played at most three spells all game, counting the artist, and have NO HAND. Better hope one of those spells drops turn five and starts swinging…
To understand how self-destructive this truly is, let’s take a look at a 60-card 23-land deck that plays Dreamscape Artist, five lands, uses his ability thrice, and burns their other two spells. That’s (60 cards – 7 initial hand – 4 drawn – 6 searched land =) 43 cards left in the deck, (23 land – 5 hard played – 6 dreamscape’d =) 12 of which are land and let’s assume two to three are Dreamscape Artist. That’s 65% to 67% chance of drawing a card that isn’t land or DA. Dunno about you but the Fire Emblem genius in me is not optimistic about those numbers, not to mention how much I hate MtG coming down to numbers. (HEART OF THE CAAAAAAARRRDS!)
Even though the disadvantage of playing him and using his effect twice (I rarely use it more than that) is -3 card advantage for a potential six useable land on turn four, I kind of secretly like the notion of burning card advantage. Rather than being a broken “Harrow on a stick”, you transform your other potentially useless spells into mana ramp. Genius! Introducing real COST into the “stick” equation. Unfortunately for Dreamscape Artist, Harrow may not be a strong enough card to put on a stick for that cost.
Mo’ Numbers:
The lowest potential useable cards is shown in the example above. The highest potential useable cards, assuming you play no other spells by turn five and only dreamscape twice, is…
(23 + 4 – 4 – 4 – 2 – 1 =) 16 out of (60 – 4 – 2 – 1 – 4 – 4 =) 45
Most card adv: 4 hand, 6 land, 64% draw
Least card adv: 2 hand, 8 land, 65% draw
This assumes that, a) you only play four land from your hand, b) you discard land/DA’s twice when dreamscaping, and c) you draw no land other than those six.
My recommendations? Perhaps you could run him in a high-cmc deck that relies on mana fixing. I’d bet he’d work in a Polymorph deck, or five-color, or even Jhoira/Erratic Explosions/Clash. It’s just that other cards do it better.
Escape! Escape! 