Magic the Gathering (MTG) - Hanweir Battlements and Hanweir Garrison - Eldritch Moon Card Review

by  R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Early on in the Eldritch Moon spoiler season, curious Magic players were treated to a powerful Legendary Creature that appeared to be the back side of a flip card. As it turns out, Hanweir, the Writhing Township is much more than any flip card. It’s actually a combination of two other cards, Hanweir Battlements and Hanweir Garrison, one a land and the other a creature.  Let’s see if these other two cards stack up to being worthy of using the new Meld mechanic to create this monstrosity.

Obviously, The Writhing Township is a lot to be excited about. A 7/4 with trample and haste, after all, is nothing to sneeze at. But it gets better. Whenever, The Writhing Township attacks, it brings along two 3/2 Eldrazi Horror tokens onto the battlefield tapped and attacking. It’s like a super Hero of Bladehold, and that card was a monster in its Standard days - and even still sees play in Modern. There is precedent for this type of card to be good.

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Hanweir Battlements is a decent utility land. It produces colorless mana and also for the price of one Red mana can tap to give a target creature haste. That alone is pretty good. Hanweir Garrison is actually similar to the Writhing Township in that it makes tokens when it attacks, except they are 1/1 human tokens. As a 2 / 3 for only three mana, though, the Garrison is definitely playable.

How do we meld them into a Writhing Township? There’s a 5 mana ability on Hanweir Battlements that you can activate if you control a copy of Hanweir Garrison. You then exile both cards and put the Writhing Township into play.

Both cards are playable on their own, which is definitely a plus. Hanweir, the Writhing Township looks to be an absolute game-ending bomb. This is definitely a Meld card to be excited about. The fact that both pieces of it could work in an aggro deck meant we would see this combo in Standard play.

Eldrazi Aggro and some builds of Red Deck Wins played a full playset of Hanweir Garrison and one or two copies of Hanweir Battlements. These were winning decks, too, so the combo was strong as expected. Since their rotation from Standard, both cards have consistently shown up in Zurgo Bellstriker Commander decks, especially in 1-vs-1 Commander.

Both the Battlements and Garrison show up all across the Commander format separately, as well, but often still in the same decks. While not quite staples, they are widely played and still hold some value because of it. It's cool to see cards that make such a powerful combination be so useful on their own. This was a great design job by Wizards.