How Call the Scions Embodies Its Color Identity in MTG

In TCG ·

Call the Scions card art from Battle for Zendikar

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Green Growth in a Devoid World: How Call the Scions Embodies Its Color Identity

If you’ve ever rummaged through a green EDH deck that loves ramp, creatures, and big payoff turns, you’ve met Call the Scions on the battlefield in spirit if not always in card text. On the surface, this Battle for Zendidar sorcery costs {2}{G} and spawns two 1/1 colorless Eldrazi Scion tokens that you can sacrifice to add {C}. The surface hints at a simple ramp engine, but the card’s color identity is where the real storytelling begins. In MTG’s design space, Call the Scions embodies green’s philosophy of growth and practical acceleration while also leaning into the set’s Eldrazi mythos. The result is a spell that feels green even as it plays with Devoid’s colorless flavor, a rare balancing act that delights fans who savor color identity nuance 🧙‍♂️🔥.

Devoid and Green: a paradox made practical

Devoid is the keyword that makes a card colorless, which would seem to clash with green’s identity. Yet green’s mana cost for Call the Scions includes green, anchoring its color identity as green in EDH and other formats that respect color identity, even though the token creatures themselves are colorless. This juxtaposition is how the card embodies its color identity in a telling, practical way: it uses a touch of green mana to conjure colorless engines that green players have learned to abuse for speed and velocity. The result is a spell that feels green in intent—ramping and accelerating into your bigger plans—even when the tokens themselves don’t carry green coloring on their bodies. It’s a reminder that color identity isn’t just about what you cast, but what you enable with what you cast 💎.

  • Token factory — Two 1/1 colorless Eldrazi Scion creature tokens enter the battlefield. They provide a quick, dependable thundering start for players who want early board presence or a springboard for later mana acceleration.
  • Sacrifice for colorless mana — Each Scion can be sacrificed to add one colorless mana ({C}). That bite-sized mana trick becomes a ripple effect in green decks, enabling you to jump from a comfortable mid-game tempo into a explosive late-game cadence.
  • Color identity alignment — Despite the Devoid framing, the card’s mana cost contains green, so green-identified decks can include Call the Scions in Commander and other formats where color identity matters. The card sits at the intersection of colorless flavor and green practicality.
  • Flavor synergy — The flavor text—“Ulamog's progeny swarm the land, draining Zendikar's mana to feed the titan's insatiable hunger.”—ties this spell to the larger Zendikar ecology. Green’s long-running theme of land and mana abundance gets a cosmic twist when Eldrazi lines become the conduit for raw power.
“Ulamog's progeny swarm the land, draining Zendikar's mana to feed the titan's insatiable hunger.”

From a gameplay standpoint, those sentences translate into tangible strategic choices. Green decks love ramping into haymakers, and Call the Scions provides a two-for-one tempo swing: board presence via two bodies and a route to colorless mana that can fuel big spells or Eldrazi synergy later in the game. The token aspect also plays nicely with green’s typical token ecosystems—think creature-centric synergies, menace of pressure, and plan-ahead wins that hinge on deploying multiple potent threats in a single turn 🧙‍♂️🎲.

Building around green identity in a Devoid world

Put Call the Scions into a green-leaning EDH shell, and you’ll find it acts as both early pressure and a flexible mana engine. The two Scions supply a predictable early board presence, while the mana they help generate can accelerate you into a decisive moment—whether that means casting a game-changing green bomb, dropping a massive planeswalker, or recasting a critical spell with a big impact. The presence of colorless mana as a payoff turns Call the Scions into a bridge card: you’re trading immediate board parity for future, bigger plays. That bridge is exactly the kind of nuance green players savor, especially when the beatdown plan collides with Eldrazi ramps and the broader Zendikar lore 🧙‍♂️🔥.

Strategically, you can pair Call the Scions with ramp that feeds green’s mid-to-late power curve. Cards like ramp spells, mana rocks that double as threats, or other Eldrazi-themed payoffs can be slotted to the same deck because Call the Scions is both a threat and a resource. In multiplayer environments, that “two bodies now, colorless mana later” dynamic can swing turns in a heartbeat, nudging games toward your long-term strategy before opponents can stabilize. It’s a lesson in tempo: green doesn’t always need flashy artifacts to win; sometimes a compact spell like this creates the right tempo shift to push victories across the finish line 🧙‍♂️⚔️.

Design, art, and the enduring appeal

From a creature-design perspective, Call the Scions embodies a core truth of Battle for Zendikar’s ethos: even colorless entities can be infused with noble, strategic purpose within a colored framework. The art by Winona Nelson captures that tension—Eldrazi progeny massing on the horizon while green mana tides swell behind them. The Devoid border effect, paired with the green-tinged cost, creates a visual reminder that this card straddles two worlds: colorless power and green’s relentless growth. It’s a design wink that MTG fans will appreciate and savor, especially when explaining the color-identity mechanics to newer players 🧙‍♂️🎨.

As a common from the BFZ set, Call the Scions remains a budget-friendly staple that can slot into many green decks without overtaxing your collection. Its value isn’t tied to flashy rares; rather, it’s tied to reliability and tempo—the kind of card green players often lean on to maintain momentum while threatening bigger, narrative-driven plays later in the game. If you’re curious about value trends, the card’s typical market reflects its accessibility, making it a thoughtful addition for players who enjoy playable staples with a strong flavor profile.

To bring this journey full circle, you don’t need a full Eldrazi ramp engine to appreciate Call the Scions. You need only a moment where the two Scion tokens appear, and the memory of a green deck suddenly sprinting toward a decisive turn with colorless mana in reserve. That’s the magic of MTG: the way color identity, flavor, and card design intersect to make a single spell feel quintessentially green—even when the token creatures are anything but colored in the traditional sense 🧙‍♂️💎.

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