Monster Manual // Zoological Study, the perfect Artifact for cheating the mana cost!
The main spell on the non-Adventure side, Monster Manual, reflects the manual’s role in bringing fantastical creatures into play, effectively allowing players to cast creatures from their hand without paying their mana costs directly, which can be a powerful tool in ramping up board presence quickly.
The Adventure side, Zoological Study, adds a thematic element of research and discovery, allowing players to sift through their deck (by milling) and potentially recover important creature cards, thus ensuring a steady flow of threats or key creatures.
Key Strategies
Cheating Big Creatures into Play
Monster Manual: The primary ability of putting a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield for just 2 mana (1G) and tapping the artifact can be a game-changer. This is especially potent in decks with high-cost creatures like Eldrazi, Dragons, or any large green creatures. By bypassing the mana cost, you can establish a strong board presence early.
As an additional benefit, you are not 'casting' the creature so you don't risk it being countered.
Deck Example: Ramp decks that accelerate mana production to quickly cast big threats can use Monster Manual to deploy those threats even faster.
Graveyard Synergy
Zoological Study: Milling five cards can fuel your graveyard for strategies that rely on having creatures in the graveyard, such as reanimation decks or those utilizing cards with flashback, escape, or delve.
Creature Recovery: The ability to return a creature card milled this way to your hand ensures you don’t lose key creatures and provides a way to recur important threats.
Deck Example: Golgari (black-green) graveyard decks often use cards that benefit from creatures in the graveyard, making Zoological Study a useful tool for setting up your graveyard and drawing value from it.
Card Advantage and Filtering
Milling five cards can help filter your deck, getting rid of unwanted cards and potentially setting up future plays. Additionally, the possibility of returning a creature card to your hand provides card advantage, ensuring you have threats to play.
Deck Example: Decks with a lot of recursion or those that need specific creatures can benefit from this form of card selection.
Combining Both Sides for Maximum Effect
Synergy Between Sides: After using Zoological Study to fill your graveyard and possibly return a creature to your hand, you can then use Monster Manual to put that creature onto the battlefield, creating a strong combo of value.
On top of all this, as a bonus, you potentially cast Monster Manual out of Adventure, which actually sits in Exile, so if you have a deck where casting spells from Exile matters, this makes for just another great trigger.
Deck Example: A Sultai (black-green-blue) deck could use this card in combination with other graveyard and reanimation strategies to create a robust and resilient board state.
Example Deck Concepts
Big Green Stompy
Core Cards:
Large creatures like Ghalta, Primal Hunger, and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider.
Ramp cards like Llanowar Elves, Cultivate, and Nissa, Who Shakes the World.
Strategy: Use ramp to cast Monster Manual early, then cheat big creatures into play.
Golgari Graveyard
Core Cards:
Graveyard enablers like Stitcher's Supplier, Satyr Wayfinder, and Grisly Salvage.
Recursion cards like Eternal Witness, Reanimate, and Meren of Clan Nel Toth.
Strategy: Use Zoological Study to fill the graveyard, then recur key creatures and use Monster Manual to cheat them into play.
Reanimator
Core Cards:
Big creatures like Sheoldred, Whispering One, and Griselbrand.
Reanimation spells like Animate Dead, Unburial Rites, and Reanimate.
Strategy: Mill big creatures with Zoological Study, return one to hand, and cheat another into play with Monster Manual or reanimation spells.
Tips for Effective Use
Timing: Knowing when to use Monster Manual or Zoological Study is crucial. Early game, you might want to mill and set up your graveyard. Late game, focusing on cheating creatures into play could be more impactful.
Synergy with Other Cards: Pair this card with other graveyard interaction spells or cards that benefit from having creatures in the graveyard, like Liliana, Death's Majesty or The Gitrog Monster.