Forgotten Harvest: Enchantment and Artifact Interactions Explored

In TCG ·

Forgotten Harvest card art from Prophecy, a lush green harvest scene with an enchantment vibe

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Green Growth and Graveyard Crafts: Forgotten Harvest and the Dance of Enchantments and Artifacts

Prophecy era MTG brought a surprisingly robust toolkit for green players who liked their decks with a bit of intrigue tucked into the grass. Forgotten Harvest, a rare enchantment from that set, costs {1}{G} and asks you to lean into a deceptively quiet exchange: you may exile a land card from your graveyard at the start of your upkeep, and if you do, you put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. The art by DiTerlizzi captures that moment of green patience—cultivating growth by choosing what to give up on the way to something greater. 🧙‍♂️🔥 The card sits in the green color identity, with the capacity to interact with artifacts and other enchantments in ways that feel both subtle and deeply satisfying for long-game planning.

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may exile a land card from your graveyard. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.

That line of text is the heart of Forgotten Harvest’s appeal. It doesn’t instantly flood the board with creatures or bury an opponent under a pile of tokens; instead, it invites you to invest in a creature over time, using your graveyard as a resource. By exiling land cards from your graveyard—not just basics but any land cards—Hidden value emerges as you stack up +1/+1 counters on a key creature. The enchantment plays nicely with artifacts and other enchantments that care about counters, board state, or recurring effects. It’s a gentle nudge toward a strategy that rewards careful planning, timing, and a willingness to play the long game. 🎲

Mechanics in Action: Why the Interaction Matters

Forgotten Harvest is a two-mana enchantment that leverages a variable resource—your graveyard's land cards. In practice, this means you can schedule small, incremental growth. If you’re running a deck that builds up a single, hard-hitting beater, you can protect it with countermagic or protective auras while gradually accruing counters via the upkeep exiles. The ability to exile “a land card” from the graveyard means you’re not restricted to certain land types; any land card in your graveyard is fair game. That flexibility makes it easier to fuel late-game swings and turn a modest startup into a game-ending crescendo. ⚔️

Enchantments and Artifacts: A Symbiotic Playground

On its surface, Forgotten Harvest is an enchantment-focused engine. But green often plays beautifully with artifacts and other enchantments that care about a broader board state. Consider a scenario in which you pair this with counters-focused synergies—such as Hardened Scales, which alters how +1/+1 counters are placed, or Doubling Season, which can dramatically amplify the number of counters placed when the Harvest fires. If you’re piloting a Commander (legal in the format, as many green commanders are), these interactions sing in the late game, turning a modest upkeep choice into a climactic moment. 🧙‍♀️💎

Beyond counters, you can weave Forgotten Harvest into a broader graveyard strategy that green commonly enjoys. While the card exiles lands from your graveyard rather than reviving them, it can work in concert with spells and effects that repeatedly put lands into your graveyard, letting you mine extra value from each upkeep. Imagine a deck that manipulates lands in the graveyard for value elsewhere, then uses a stored-up buffer of +1/+1 counters to threaten a single, unstoppable attacker. In this sense, Forgotten Harvest embodies that old-school Prophecy spirit: enchantment-based engine rooms that feel counterintuitively interactive with artifacts and other permanents. 🪄

Deckbuilding Notes: How to Use Forgotten Harvest in the Real World

If you’re building around this enchantment, prioritize a plan that protects the pump—your creature with the counters—from removal while you accumulate value. Include resilient threats, and pair the enchantment with tools that help you reuse its effect across multiple upkeeps. A few practical ideas:

  • Include +1/+1 counter synergies: Doubling Season, Hardened Scales, and other counter-spreading effects create exponential growth when Forgotten Harvest delivers a single counter a few times.
  • Foster graveyard-rich interactions: while you exile lands, add card draw or recursion that helps you reach your long-term goals, ensuring you aren’t stranded with an early enchantment that can’t fuel growth later.
  • Leverage protection and flicker: counterspells or temporary bounce effects can help you keep the Harvest out of danger while you stack counters on a resilient creature—think of it as a green tempo engine with a patient payoff.
  • Choose the right creature as a target: a resilient beater or a creature with its own built-in payoff (e.g., a creature that powers up with counters or benefits from being large) can maximize the impact of each +1/+1 boost.
  • Play to the set’s era and artful themes: Prophecy-era cards carry a distinctive vibe—grassy, fertile magic with a hint of ancient mystery. Embrace that flavor in your game plan and in your table talk. 🎨

For collectors and lore enthusiasts, Forgotten Harvest also offers a window into the design priorities of its time. The artwork, the placement of a “land exile” mechanic within an enchantment, and the card’s rarity all speak to a period when Magic’s green supporters were exploring new ways to reward long-term planning. The result is a card that’s not just a line of text on a card, but a narrative about growth, sacrifice, and the patient hand behind a flourishing battlefield. ©

Flavor, Lore, and the Collector’s Eye

DiTerlizzi’s illustration carries that lush Prophecy-era mood—verdant, almost primordial magic that feels older than the game itself. The enchantment’s lore, while not as explicit as a legendary story, hints at a philosophy of harvest: you may cull a resource now to sow a larger harvest later. It’s the Magic version of “you reap what you sow,” but with a green twist that rewards careful resource management and clever timing. The rarity and the print history (Prophecy, a set with a devoted following) add to its allure for collectors who relish under-appreciated gems from earlier days. 🧙‍♂️💎

As you draft or brew around Forgotten Harvest, you’re not just playing a single effect—you’re nudging a game toward a rhythm where upkeeps become crescendo moments, and a single land exile can echo across several turns. It’s the kind of card that rewards both nostalgia and modern experimentation, making it a bridge between generations of MTG players. Whether you’re building for casual cube pride or a more serious Commander list, the enchantment’s quiet potency deserves a second, closer look. 🎲

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