Oh, Eldrazi Temple.

Powering out cards on the cheap is one of the incentives for some of the more broken cards that have existed in the history of the game. Of course, not everything can be a Black Lotus or a Mox Jet; hell, even a Dark Ritual pushes the envelop of the acceptable! These kinds of effects have long proven to be so powerful that they can be hard to handle unless they get hamstrung.

The first of these that we got to see on a land was the powerhouse, Mishra’s Workshop.

Mishra’s Workshop was unfair. Brutally unfair. But when it was printed, for the most part, we didn’t know what to do with it; the cards you could power out, for the most part, were simply not worthy of the card. There were only about one hundred artifacts, and the most worthy of them usually had an activation cost. Icy Manipulator was one of the best things that you could do in that era, but Workshop didn’t let you do anything truly obscene with it. I remember Clockwork Beast and Juggernaut being the scariest things that could happen.

Of course, time passed, and the unfair power of a card like Workshop became all the more potent as more cards were printed that could take advantage of the absurdness the card was capable of.

It was in this era that we were also given the Urzatron. Urza’s Tower, Urza’s Power Plant, and Urza’s Mine would see play a lot more than Mishra’s Workshop back then, because you could actually use the mana that the Urza’s lands gave you for activations. This was a key. In this crazy nearly pre-history of the game, it was actually quite hard to assemble the full Tron (remember, this was the time of unrestricted Strip Mine), but if you did, the rewards were far more fulfilling. Eventually, we’d get enough tools to make Urzatron a respectable form of mana, but it would always require the effort to assemble. For the math geeks among you, it is worth noting that your chances of getting the Urzatron assembled by turn 3, without "helper" cards is about one in seven (roughly). This wasn’t encouraging until we started getting cards like Sylvan Scrying; taking effort to find lands really is limiting.

Getting the mana bonus was something that Wizards had figured out was definitely of high value, and they had decided to tie it to something less difficult than the Tron, but with other inherent limitations. If you think about it, the idea of having limited mana acceleration within a single land is pretty straightforward… Looksie! Two mana from a single land (but with a caveat)!

Each of these cards was powerful enough that eventually Wizards decided to step away from the idea entirely. Crystal Vein was probably best known for its use in Hatred decks, which were powerful enough to give Mike Flores a near-Top 8 at a U.S. Nats. Ancient Tomb saw play all over the place, from its use in the quasi-Ponza-esque Sped Red to its powering up of numerous artifact-based decks. City of Traitors enjoyed a similar role, helping power out artifacts of all kinds and turn one Ophidians (among other cards).

Temple of the False Gods was a special case for these cards. Two mana on turn 1, even with drawbacks, was just proving to be too powerful. Limiting the Temple so that is provided zero mana until you had five land in play was R&D’s way of acknowledging the real problem that fast acceleration was causing. Slow acceleration was fine, but fast… no way!

Temple of the False Gods would be an important part of its block, leading many charges into the high end of mana. Brian Kowal would design a "Slideless" Red/White deck with Akromas that Bob Maher would take to a championship in GP: Detroit. Pierre Canali would go undefeated in the Magic: the Gathering Invitational in 2006 with my "Birds of Paradise" Avatar "Auction of Geniuses" deck, sporting 4 Temple of the False Gods. In both my and Brian’s case, the Temple was there to provide the same power: extra mana just ‘cause.

Recently, we have Eye of Ugin as a card that does the same thing, albeit without any real place to go with it. Until Rise of the Eldrazi.

Unlike Eye of Ugin, which aside from being Legendary, is also hampered by its general inability to, oh, I don’t know, make mana, Eldrazi Temple can serve a purpose other than simply dropping down Eldrazi. If you want to cast Explore, Eldrazi Temple can help you out. If you want to cast Day of Judgment, Eldrazi Temple is there for you. But that’s not what it is for.

What it is for, obviously, is dropping ridiculously overpriced spells into play. Ridiculously overpriced spells, sure, but spells that are beyond insane when they hit play. For those of you who are looking for spoiler-free previews (is that even a thing people want?), you’ll have to look elsewhere.

"Colorless Eldrazi" aren’t just the behemoths that march the earth with their power and toughness and Annihilation X, making deckbuilders like me hope that they aren’t "really" good. They are also spells. So far, as spoiled , the Eldrazi rang in casting costs from seven to fifteen. Fifteen. You can bet your bottom dollar that if you’re casting an Eldrazi from basic lands that you’ve done a hell of a lot of work. Every time you drop an Eldrazi Temple, you’re cutting a turn off of the time it takes you to get to the absurdity that are these cards.

It’s wholly possible that the Eldrazi will never be tournament playable. But if they are, you’re going to need to be using cards like Eldrazi Temple to be putting down any kind of fight against decks that are casting Blightning or Cruel Ultimatum, let alone Goblin Guide.

Even if you don’t flop a set of Eldrazi Temple, just having a couple can mean that you are doing Annihilator 4 on turn 5, with a little help from cards like Everflowing Chalice. Personally, I’d hate to be staring down a Kozilek that early. How about you?

Adrian Sullivan