The banning of Vivi Ornitier from MTG's standard format in mid November slammed the breaks on the format, kicking aggro strategies to the curb and giving midrange and control decks the breathing room needed to let their long term game plans play out. While Dimir self-bounce hasn't regained the prominence it has had at some points in the last two years, the latest MTG set has given it a very powerful new tool: 'The Legend of Kuruk', an excellent payoff for the deck's strategy of repeatedly playing the same permanents to annihilate the opponent's board and build your own. When MTG Avatar: the Last Airbender launched on November 21, copies of The Legend of Kuruk settled at a stable $3, but they started rising a week ago and hit a peak of $9 on December 4.
My initial read on the Legend of Kuruk was that it was just too slow and value-oriented to make it in standard - which shows how much my perception of MTG has been warped by months of Mono Red Aggro and Izzet Cauldron.
For two generic and two blue mana it's a saga enchantment with three chapters. For the first two chapters it allows you to Scry 2 and then draw a card; for the third chapter, it's Exiled and then returns to the battlefield transformed as the creature Avatar Kuruk.
When he shows up, he a 4/3 with a powerful build-around ability: whenever you cast a spell, you create a 1/1 colorless spirit creature token that can't block or be blocked by non-spirit creatures. Finally, he has an activated ability: you can waterbend 20, and take an extra turn.
Kuruk won't be out to play before turn six, so he needs a home in a deck with lots of removal that can keep the pressure off his controller. But he's not as directly powerful as the typical win condition for a control deck - his raw stats are middling, and his ability to project threats using unblockable tokens is best when you can fire off a lot of cheap spells.
Enter Dimir Bounce, which is heavy on removal, stacked with one mana spells, uses Entity Tracker for card draw, and is themed entirely around bouncing cheap permanents back to your hand to recast for value. If you have six mana open and a couple of spells in your grip on the turn Kuruk enters, you should be able to generate four power's worth of (mostly) unblockable tokens - on top of whatever other shenanigans you got up to casting spells.
Kuruk's ability to grant you an extra turn is not a magical Christmas land wish, either, since you can tap any creatures and artifacts you have in play to pay the waterbending cost whether or not they have summoning sickness. And you only have to get to a total of 20 creatures, lands, and artifacts once to win - at that point you never have to let your opponent take another turn, and can just keep casting spells and generating tokens, freeing up more and more of your board to attack.
Despite closing in on ten dollars, The Legend of Kuruk is so far off the most expensive MTG cards from Avatar it's farcical - that would be the Badgermole Cub, currently sitting north of $80. That one was no surprise. If you spotted the Legend of Kuruk's potential on day one, let us know about the decks you're running it in! You'll find a warm welcome in the Wargamer Discord community. And to get a weekly round up of all Wargamer's best stories, make sure you're subscribed to our site newsletter.