Magic: The Gathering Core Set 2020 spoiler season is starting its second week and we have some awesome cards to cover! Today, we’re taking a look at the newest Elemental lord coming to the game and MTG Arena: Thunderkin Awakener.
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Thunderkin Awakener
We’ve seen similar cards to this in the past (Snapcaster Mage, Dreadhorde Arcanist), but those cards really only affected noncreature spells. In addition to that, they also always exile the spell you bring back from the graveyard. Well, Thunderkin Awakener allows you to target creatures in your graveyard, and — possibly the craziest thing about the card — you don’t have to exile the creature you bring back for a turn. This is huge because it allows you to loop the same creature over and over!
Thunderkin targets
So, what crazy Elementals are available for us to abuse with this card? Its targets on MTG Arena Standard are pretty limited for now, but Elementals seem to be a theme for Core Set 2020, so we may see more targets show up. In Modern, you can use Thunderkin to bring back Ball Lightning, Lightning Skelemental, Groundbreaker, or Spark Trooper as early as turn two if you use Faithless Looting to put one in your graveyard!
A deck utilizing this strategy would be pretty scary to run against, and it could even potentially be on par with the super degenerate stuff going on in Modern right now. Honestly, a deck built around this theme seems powerful but marginally inconsistent. Maybe we see a deck like this running 4 Unearth to get back these Ball Lightning effects and to retrieve Thunderkin Awakener if it were to ever die.
Keep up!
Magic: The Gathering Core Set 2020 spoilers are still rolling out, so be sure to keep up with them on our MTG news page! Core Set 2020 is coming to MTG Arena Standard soon, so be on the lookout for more updates!
