Constellations: Where Every Card Causes Chaos

"Let Heliod's light banish this false god!"

Of all the great revelers, there was one who would stand above the rest.  Xenagos, a planeswalking Satyr, deemed that it was his time to ascend to godhood and force the old pantheon to accept his transcendence.  This angered many of the gods, but more importantly Heliod, the God of the Sun, and he summoned Elspeth to prevent Xenagos from becoming a god.  In Born of the Gods, Xenagos ascends and the realm of Nyx is ripped open allowing creatures and people that were born in that realm to seep into Theros.  These creatures are unlike their counterparts, even in their card art [see above], and come into Theros as Enchantment Creatures.  In the final part of the series, Journey into Nyx, Xenagos is slain by Elpseth with her powerful spear, The Godsend, but the entrance to Nyx begins to let living constellations walk onto the plane of Theros.

"Coins of the Underworld are shaped from clay funerary masks." -Underworld Coinsmith

Constellations enchantments and creatures were released with Journey into Nyx and come with very interesting abilities.  The most defining part of these cards is that they trigger off of other copies of themselves or another enchantment.  For example, when looking at the Underworld Coinsmith his ability dictates that whenever another coinsmith or another enchantment comes into play, you gain one life.  His pay ability is fantastic because you remain at the same life value, while everyone loses a life.  Another fantastic Constellation card that has complete synergism with the Underworld Coinsmith is the Grim Guardian.




The Grim Guardian functions as a basic counter to early aggression, but also has a combined function of dealing damage to your opponent every round.  His constellation ability triggers like any other, a copy of himself or another enchantment comes into play, but every opponent loses one life.  Combined with the Underworld Coinsmith, you are looking at a potential of an additional life and the opponent has lost one life when this card first comes into play.  This continues to snowball the second you have a copy of Grim Guardian in play.  With two Grim Guardians, you gain one more life and opponent now loses two life for every enchantment played.




That's the major idea of Constellations is synergy.  These guys practically ooze synergy to the point where you will be tearing down your opponent's front lines, life pool, their hand and even their deck.  There are also defensive Constellation cards like Harvestguard Alseids, which prevent all damage that would be dealt to target creature this turn, whenever an enchantment is played.  This allows you to freely throw your creature out on the field at your opponent.  Not only does this allow you to trigger Inspire on your other creatures next round, but it also threatens opponents by either taking damage or losing a creature.   Though there are two crown jewels of this set: Skybind and Eidolon of Blossoms.

Skybind, much like Oblivion Ring and Banishing Light, functions as a removal spell.  This one allows players to bounce a big creature off the battlefield and prevents your opponent from swinging at you with non-enchantment creatures or permanents.  The problem with this is that there are a ton of enchantments in the Theros Block, but it does allow you to exile land, artifacts and usually large creatures.  Combined with Banishing Light you can technically remove two permanents from the game (one round of course with Skybind) allowing you to gain an advantage.  Now let's consider the best Constellation card of the set, Eidolon of Blossoms.

Eidolon of Blossoms is a reprint of an older card known as Enchantress's Presence. Whenever an enchantment is played you may draw a card.  With two of those on the field with a green deck focused on either Bestow creatures or Constellations, you could be drawing 2-8 additional cards a turn.  While you suffer a chance of milling yourself with that combo, it does allow you to gain card advantage and maintain tempo versus your opponent.  The current meta for Eidolon of Blossoms is to run it within a Black/Green Constellation/Enchantment deck. Another set of cards that come out in almost core set are Slivers.  If you read my first post, you'll know that I have some personal grudge against Sliver decks and it's dominantly because of their perfect and infinite synergy.

Slivers have always been part of Magic the Gathering.  While it is nearly impossible to depose them for being the kings of synergy, Constellation is not far behind.  Slivers can boost each other to excruciatingly high levels of pain and annoyance in five to six turns.  In Legacy some Slivers are immune to counterspells, cannot be target of spells, protection from one or two colors and are 4/4.  Nothing can fully dethrone Slivers either, in Magic 2014 slivers seemed to come back in full force.  While Constellations are coming of age, there are currently only sixteen in the current release versus the innumerable amount of Slivers that many players can choose from.  All in all, I hope in the future of Magic the Gathering that we see more constellation cards being released, but it is more than likely it will remain memories within the Theros Block.