Invasion Card Spotlight: Tsabo's Web

Mike Flores

Tsabo's Web Artifact Rare When Tsabo's Web comes into play, draw a card. Lands with an activated ability that doesn't produce mana don't untap during their controllers' untap steps. Illus. Carl Critchlow 317/350

Myself, Steve and Dan O' Mahoney Schwartz sat on a train in New York, talking about Standard. Though we, at that point, knew nothing of the soon-to-be released Invasion set, Steve and I thought that Rebel and Rising Waters variants would probably have viability; Dan said that while he didn't know what deck would be best, he knew at least one slot of cards in whatever deck that was.

Rishadan Port.

We all had a laugh at the abusive power of Rishadan Port; with Invasion's rumors of polychromatic "gold" cards, Port would be even more powerful. Though good in most situations, the ability to lock down one of multiple colors with even a single Port would deny the opponent not only the ability to cast spells of that color, but any multicolor cards he or she had in hand.

We agreed, therefore, that something would have to be done about Rishadan Port.

Something has been done.

When I say that Tsabo's Web is one of the most powerful, environment-altering, Constructed cards in Invasion, I am not exaggerating. This card, though ostensibly designed to halt the power of Rishadan Port in the upcoming Standard, is just too good.

Note that Tsabo's Web is a cantrip card. That is, when it comes into play, Tsabo's Web's controller draws a card. Now assuming that the card has no other value, Tsabo's Web allows a player the ability to play a 56-card deck, essentially, rather than a 60-card one.

Because Tsabo's Web is a cantrip, it is never a "wasted draw." This is very different from most of the powerful strategy hosers of the past. When Bob Maher, Jr. played with Null Rod at PT Chicago, he had the ability to shut down the explosive mana and Phyrexian Processors of an opposing Tinker deck. He was himself forced to play with cards like Enlightened Tutor to find his Null Rod, as well as cards like Brainstorm in order to get rid of the potentially wasted draw should he not want the Null Rod in a certain matchup. By the same token, when we designed Jon Finkel's 2000 National Championship deck, Jon, the OMS brothers, and I had to accept the possibilities of drawing Massacre against Accelerated Blue or Perish against a Yawgmoth's Bargain deck. These were risks in the deck design; we also had to alleviate the problem by running cards like Unmask in order to make up a potentially lost draw.

Tsabo's Web, as a cantrip, does not have this drawback. In fact, even when it is "not working," that is, the opponent isn't running a strategy based around specialty lands, it helps to cycle through a player's deck in order to help him or her find more useful cards.

But that isn't all. Tsabo's Web also offers incredible card advantage. A single Web will turn the mighty Rishadan Port into a Wintermoon Mesa... in fact, it will turn all Rishadan Ports into one-shot tricks. A single Web will wipe out Dust Bowl, Kor Haven, and Rath's Edge simultaneously. As an artifact, it can not only be used by every color (at least every deck that does not rely on non-basic lands with special non-mana abilities), but it is impossible for some colors to answer by themselves.

The best-case scenario for any opponent once Tsabo's Web is in play is to give up card economy. Say the Web is in play and an opposing white mage would like to remove it; his general choice will be to use Disenchant or Seal of Cleansing to do so. Now say the Web is gone and the white mage can now untap his Kor Haven and Dust Bowl. The white mage has essentially used one card (the Disenchant or Seal of Cleansing) to allow the Tsabo's Web player to draw an extra card. This is not a good deal at all for the white mage! And, since Tsabo's Web is a cantrip that allows its user to cycle through his or her own deck, it is even more likely that the Web player will just find another Tsabo's Web... after all, he or she has gone another card deeper in the library!

Now this speaks mostly to Standard play, as a reaction to Rishadan Port. Tsabo's Web is even more powerful in the other popular Constructed format, Extended. For one thing, it will turn off every Mirage "fetch land" (Bad River, Mountain Valley, Rocky Tar Pit, et al). Because the Mirage fetch lands come into play tapped and do not have a mana producing ability (they look for mana-producing lands) they are basically useless and will never untap at all if Tsabo's Web is in play. Some decks, like Zvi Mowshowitz's Turbo Land or Bob Maher's Oath of Druids decks, use Treetop Village or other Urza's Legacy "man lands" as a kill strategy... like their Mirage counterparts, the man lands come into play tapped... and will not see an untap under Tsabo's Web. The same issue arises for Thawing Glaciers, one of the main drawing engines of the Extended format.

The influence of Tsabo's Web goes far beyond the Port in Standard, and radically alters the viability of non-basic land strategies in all Constructed formats. Following are the main issues I see initially with Tsabo's Web:

1. Tsabo's Web is very mana efficient. Compare to Serrated Arrows, which did much the same thing against Knight or weenie decks a few years ago. Serrated Arrows had the same card advantage allure as Tsabo's Web. Serrated Arrows cost four mana, not two.

2. Tsabo's Web is very broad. In the summer of 1997, I would run around tournaments and say "Ancestral Recall" whenever someone would cast a Serrated Arrows, because I knew that player was about to be on the good side of 3-for-1 card advantage (or at least a virtual burst of card advantage, should the opponent choose not to play any of his or her now-vulnerable Knights). Tsabo's Web does the same thing against specialty lands, except it does not stop at 3-for-1 advantage. Should the opponent have a dozen Rishadan Ports, Dust Bowls, and Treetop Villages in play, hanging out next to a Yavimaya Hollow, Kor Haven, and Rath's Edge, Tsabo's Web will shut them all down. It is a mistake to think that because Tsabo's Web does not actually destroy, but simply incapacitates, lands, that it is not generating actual and virtual card advantage.

3. Tsabo's Web will be played, even if people are expecting it. If a certain strategy hoser, let's say Perish, became very popular, you would see a decline in green decks over the course of an evolving metagame. At that point, Perish would no longer be very good, but instead a liability; Perish itself would start to fall out of favor, controlling blue decks might start to rise without bashing green decks to hold them back (and we know that those blue decks do a number on Perish-packing black decks), so via all these forces together, green could return to relative viability. Now let's say that Tsabo's Web becomes very popular, forcing specialty land strategies out of the metagame... continued use of Tsabo's Web (whether taking up space in the main deck or sideboard) will only be a minor liability, since it is a cantrip), so its continued use would be less likely to fall out of favor. As such, cards like Rishadan Port would not necessarily return to use, cyclically speaking.

In sum, we return to Dan OMS's statement about not knowing what archetype will be best in the new Standard, but knowing at least one card slot in that best deck... Dan's statement may have been correct, it seems, even if Rishadan Port is not the card in question.

To find out more about Invasion cards and Prerelease events, click here.

Tomorrow: Gary Wise goes for the win with Meteor Storm.