Last updated on January 30, 2025
Bloom Tender | Illustration by Scott M. Fischer
Honey, wake up! A new Lotus just dropped in Aetherdrift, and it makes a lot of mana! Wait a second, that sounds familiar…. Oh, right! This happens about once a year now when players get their highly overhyped annual Lotus card, and the death race demolition derby set has the latest one. But for once, this Lotus might actually be busted.
Introducing Radiant Lotus
A 6-mana artifact, in 2020s Magic? No way, right? Well maybe, just maybe, Radiant Lotus has what it takes to properly justify its nomenclature. Here’s some quick hits that you’ll need to internalize to really see why people are clamoring about it:
“Sacrifice one or more artifacts”: Baseline this is a 6-mana Black Lotus. Not good. Sacrifice another artifact alongside it and it refunds your mana. Anything beyond that is net positive on mana, almost like a super ritual. Simply resolving Radiant Lotus and sacrificing four artifacts turns 6 mana into 12 mana. That’s enough to cast… hold on, ignore the sounds of a quick Scryfall search happening… Emrakul, the World Anew or Blightsteel Colossus!
“Target player adds three mana…”: Wait a second, target player? Is this a secret group hug card? Well, not really, unless you’re feeling really generous. However, giving this mana rock a target means it’s not a mana ability, and does in fact use the stack. Chances are Wizards wanted there to be more avenues for interaction with this ability, which is a sneaky testament to just how powerful it might be. However, in addition to being Stifle-bait with something like Tishana's Tidebinder, the ability can also be copied with Rings of Brighthearth or Ashnod the Uncaring, to name a few.
The card has Lotus in its name: Honestly, this shouldn’t really be a selling point, but Wizards knows what they’re doing when they print these cards. Putting Lotus in the name of an MTG card is like tacking Star Wars onto a new TV show–regardless of the quality, people will show up for it.
Where to Expect Radiant Lotus
Commander
Might as well just address the big elephant right away. Radiant Lotus is broken in Commander, full stop. And this is coming from the same set that’s printing The Aetherspark, so get ready for a new wave of colorless powerhouses in 100-card formats. It’s beyond trivially easy to flood a Commander board with artifacts and cash in this Lotus for an obscene amount of mana. Oh, and it’s colored mana! Just watch out for those Deflecting Swats!
Standard
It’s hard to imagine the Standard build that wants this card. There aren’t too many big-mana spells in Standard that warrant making 10+ mana anyway, unless you’re trying to do something cute with Omniscience or Rise of the Dark Realms. It’s even harder to imagine a world where decks that want those kinds of finishers are leaning into artifact strategies to get there. Were a deck like this to ever actually rear its head in Standard, the tools exist to completely shut it down. Brotherhood's End is still legal in the format, isn’t it?
Modern
“The new KCI” is something that’s been thrown around on social media already. Krark-Clan Ironworks was banned from Modern in 2019, and for good reason. It was capable of producing resilient (and time-consuming) loops that resulted in near-infinite colorless mana. The thing is, Ironworks costs 4 mana and sits in play as a repeatable artifact sac outlet; Radiant Lotus by comparison costs a whole 2 mana more and has a once-per-turn limitation. The output’s definitely there, but you don’t see tons of 6-drops in Modern for a reason.
The new Lotus definitely wowed some players, with Saffron Olive going to bat for the card outside of Standard, with Modern being the first likely home for the artifact. He was met with some pushback, but there’s no denying the card definitely has that “wow!” factor.
Other Eternal Formats
Does Radiant Lotus have a home in Legacy? Vintage, even? The latter is the format for Tolarian Academy and Mishra's Workshop, after all. But those artifact-heavy decks are rarely trying to super-ramp their way towards an even bigger source of mana, and it seems like a Coveted Jewel or Bolas's Citadel might be preferable for decks that have an easy time hitting 6 mana.
Multievolution on r/MagicTCG mimics this evaluation: “By the time you have this out, you’ve probably already got your mana sorted, and if you don’t there’s tons of ways for the type of deck this is made for to manage it better.”
Regardless of Vintage applications, some subset of Legacy players are just dying to sleeve up their Stifles again, should Lotus ever actually make a splash in the format.
At any rate, time will tell if Radiant Lotus ever graces a Constructed format in any serious capacity, but it’s poised to make a bigger impact than its most recent Lotus cousins. It’s probably about time to admit Timeless Lotus isn’t all that special of a card, people.
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