Finding Foster's Mechanic Cousins: Clustering MTG Cards

In TCG ·

Foster card art from MTG Commander 2013, a verdant green enchantment

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Clustering MTG Cards by Mechanical Similarity: A Foster Case Study

Magic: The Gathering rewards the imagination in more ways than one: lore, art, and—perhaps most playfully—the way a card’s mechanics click with others to form a bigger strategy. When you start grouping cards by how their abilities orbit around a central idea, you unlock a map of possibilities you didn’t realize were waiting in your own collection. Foster provides a delightful lens into this approach. This rare green enchantment from Commander 2013 doesn’t just sit on the battlefield; it sparks a neighborhood of interactions that green players can leverage by leaning into attrition, recursion, and careful deck design. 🧙‍♂️🔥

Meet Foster: A Green Enchantment with a Death-Born Tutor

  • Name: Foster
  • Mana Cost: {2}{G}{G}
  • Type: Enchantment
  • Colors: Green
  • Rarity: Rare
  • Set: Commander 2013 (C13)
  • Oracle Text: Whenever a creature you control dies, you may pay {1}. If you do, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a creature card. Put that card into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.

That line—turning a setback into a search-and-grab for the next creature—is where Foster nudges green into a distinctly recursive, creature-centric groove. The cost is straightforward, the timing is generous (death triggers are abundant in a creature-heavy board), and the payoff is a targeted hand refill that chains into future plays. It’s a flavor of card advantage that rewards patience and careful sequencing. The art by Carl Critchlow captures a verdant, watchful life force that seems to grow greener with every sacrifice, a perfect match for the card’s strategic heartbeat. 💚 ✨

From a gameplay perspective, Foster is a tutor-on-death effect that scales with the battlefield’s tempo. If you can weather removal and maintain board presence just long enough to trigger a few sacrifices, you can assemble a meal of creature threats and options. The ability to search until you hit a creature card means you’re not just drawing; you’re funneling your own library toward creatures you want on the battlefield or in your hand for the next swing. It’s a quiet engine, but it hums with potential as the game lengthens. And in EDH/Commander, where attrition and value-driven plays are the name of the game, Foster sits right at the crossroads of synergy and resilience. 🧙‍♂️🪄

Clustering Cousins: A Neighborhood of Similar Mechanics

Foster belongs to a broader cluster of mechanics that green enchantments and creatures love to foster. Here are a few nearby motifs you’ll often see lining up alongside Foster in competitive and casual tables alike:

  • Death-triggered card advantage: Enchantments and creatures that reward you when your minions die, often by drawing, tutoring, or filtering your library. These moments create a rhythm: sacrifice, search, draw, deploy, repeat.
  • Top-of-library manipulation: Cards that reveal or rearrange what’s on top, giving you a peek behind the curtain and letting you plan your next few turns with greater clarity.
  • Creature recursion and resupply: The idea that your graveyard can become a wellspring, returning threats or fueling value engines as the game unfolds.
  • Green resilience and attrition: Green’s natural tendencies—growth, ramp, and behemoth creatures—pair well with delayed-gratification engines that pay off as the battlefield evolves.
  • Government of a deck’s “wrong-side-of-the-trade”: Sacrifices balanced by gains in card quality, turning losses into targeted fetches. This is the sweet spot where tempo and inevitability braid together.

Put differently: Foster invites you to design around a death-and-delivery loop. The first sacrifice might feel like a tempo hit, but the longer you sustain the chain, the more your deck’s engine pulls you toward better draws and more options. In practice, you’ll pair Foster with a thoughtful mix of token producers, protection, and stable ramp so that the death triggers happen often enough to churn through your deck, yet not so often that you hemorrhage value. The payoff—hand-refresh with a guaranteed creature pick—feels almost like a green tutor that’s been given a second life by attrition. ⚔️ 💎

Art, Flavor, and the Design Lesson

Critchlow’s illustration in Foster leans into the evergreen motif of life’s persistence—lush vines, a sense of growth from sacrifice, and a quiet, ancient magic that green channels through cards. The flavor aligns with the mechanic: you tilt the balance toward growth by letting the land—your library—contribute a future creature to your hand. When you cluster Foster with other green effects that reward sacrifice or rotation of resources, you see how Magics’ design philosophy often rewards players who think in cycles: use what you have, then let it renew itself in a more potent form. It’s a design pattern that resonates across many green sets and eras, from early evergreen roots to modern, data-driven Commander lists. 🎨

And while Foster’s print is not a flashy mythic, its value lies in consistency and playability. It’s rare, yes, but the card’s charm is in its reliability: a green engine that rewards you for creatures dying, not merely for creatures surviving. It’s a reminder that in MTG, strength often lies not in a single, explosive moment but in the careful choreography of several small, meaningful interactions that pay dividends over the long game. 🐉 🏆

For collectors and deck builders alike, Foster offers a compact, resilient engine—especially in Commander where the table tends to stabilize around value engines and attrition-heavy play. Its price point on Scryfall reflects its niche appeal, with a practical, budget-friendly edge that makes it approachable for many players exploring the green-centric strategy space. If you’re building a deck that leans into creature death as a resource rather than a setback, Foster deserves a thoughtful look as part of a cluster you’re assembling—one that rewards planning, timing, and a little bit of daring. 💸

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