MTG Salvation

ANOTHER 4cc green creature getting discussed today. This card is a stat monster, and in most heavy-green decks the abilities should heavily lean in the controller's favor. Taxing opponents removal spells by two mana on top of an already above-curve body might be all an aggressive or midrange deck needs to get those final points in. I normally don't aim to include four mana creatures without an enters-the-battlefield ability or haste in my aggressive decks, but this (alongside cards like Hero of Bladehold) might be an exception...Thoughts?

The lack of evasion hurts here, but this in some ways compares favorably to Thrun. The downside is that because most cube removal is so mana-efficient, the ability to pay to remove the ability becomes a bigger liability.

It's a really cool card design all the way around, but I'm not sold that it's worth cubing.

I think people are going to overestimate the downside here. This is basically the body of a Frost Titan for 2GG, which is fantastic. You do Thalia tax yourself, but decks have been dealing with that drawback for ages just fine, and how many noncreature spells do you really need to be casting when you’re beating down with a 6/6? I want to play this in any green deck that wants to beat face.

Currently I run Master of the Wild Hunt, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Thrun, the Last Troll. I think Oracle and Thrun are better than it. I could see replacing Master since most of the time it comes down and just dies. I also run Kalonian Hydra at 5 though and could maybe see replacing it with that since they are both just big beat sticks. I would need to test though to see if the 2 mana tax is better than the trample.


Even though cubes often run a lot of efficient removal that can kill this, swords / path to exile would cost 3 mana which means you are still trading even in terms of mana cost (or close enough), and against control decks it's easier to commit to the board knowing you just turned wraths into 6 mana (5 for toxic Deluge I suppose, but it would be 5 + 6 life)

I'm not sold, but I'm interested. Frost titan protection is important, 6 power and 5+ toughness are important stat baselines, first for trading with titans/sphinx, 5 toughness for living through wildfire/red based damage.
The third clause isn't total flavor text either, Mind twist, liliana of the veil, hymn to tourach, kologhan's command etc value is a thing.

My concerns are how easily it's chump blocked, and the downside of making your non-creature spells cast 2 more. Green heavy creature decks in my cube aren't... good. They need to ramp into something busted, combo off, or go bigger. Card is better in green sections that support cards like Rancor, Rhonas, more beat down focused..

Green 4's are so bad that I'll probably give it a test spin.

This is an interesting Thrun-esque beater. I definitely don't like it as much as Thrun but it might be close. Would it have killed them to make this guy indestructible too? Then we'd really be talking!

Quote from Swarles_Barkley »

Quote from allred123 »

Currently I run Master of the Wild Hunt, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Thrun, the Last Troll. I think Oracle and Thrun are better than it. I could see replacing Master since most of the time it comes down and just dies. I also run Kalonian Hydra at 5 though and could maybe see replacing it with that since they are both just big beat sticks. I would need to test though to see if the 2 mana tax is better than the trample.


Even though cubes often run a lot of efficient removal that can kill this, swords / path to exile would cost 3 mana which means you are still trading even in terms of mana cost (or close enough), and against control decks it's easier to commit to the board knowing you just turned wraths into 6 mana (5 for toxic Deluge I suppose, but it would be 5 + 6 life)

Why would this card add mana to sweepers?

oops, my mistake, in my mind I went from things targeting this to all spells.

Too weak, and too uninteresting of a card gameplay-wise to even be considered in any list 540 and above.



Hard pass from me.

Quote from LucidVision »

I'm not sold, but I'm interested.

..........

Green 4's are so bad that I'll probably give it a test spin.

Man, this summarizes my thoughts exactly. In a creature-heavy green deck, this is mostly a 4cc 6/6 that has a Frost Titan-esque defense mechanism and a goofy Dodecapod upside. The non-creature tax hurts though, so I'd be interested to see what kinds of shells this really shines in.

No evasion, still dies to wrath, and only kind of has hexproof.

If this was straight up 6/6 hexproof for 4, I'd be interested, but honestly not blown away. As is, I think this doesn't really shore up any of green's weaknesses and I don't know how much it needs another efficient beater that can get chumped forever.

That being said, green 4's don't really have a big body in cube right now, so maybe I need to test this. I'm not sure how much better than Blastoderm it's gonna be in an average game, though, and I haven't wanted that card in a long time.

Sadly, I think Polukranos is gonna survive yet another round of cuts. This doesn't do anything aside from being big and making removal a bit awkward. Plus you can't curve it into a Plow Under/Stunted Growth/Primal Command, which is a considerable drawback.

Green decks that want creatures might not care very much about the drawback, because if you're playing this guy you're probably all about bashing in the face with progressively bigger green men. He's a little annoying to deal with, hits hard, and you still have 5- & 6-drops to slam after he comes down. With enough creatures like this, there might not be enough wraths in your opponents deck to save them.

Lack of evasion sucks on a 6/6, but, he's only 4 mana. That's a tremendous wall for aggro to climb, and the control decks are probably slowed down if they plan to use spot removal. Like, my opponent isn't going to be excited to pay 5 to vindicate, downfall or o-ring this guy. They're probably not even THAT happy about a 3 mana path. Will the red deck ever be happy about bolting it for 3 mana?

Overall I think Trample would have really sold it, or some other interaction that supports a cool gameplan; but right now I think he fits into beefy green midrange. But, he's also imminently cuttable. There are plenty of cooler cards with equal or greater power-level. Our green decks are on the "passively ramp" side of things, so I don't think I even need to give him a run.

This would be a great card for RG Wildfire decks, if it wasn't a terrible card in RG Wildfire decks.

Taxing yourself is too much of a drawback for an easily chumped creature. I like my current 4 drops because they act as removal (Polukranos, Master of the wild Hunt) or broken like Oracle of Mul Daya. As for a hard to remove beater, Thrun serves that purpose well.

How does this compare to Goreclaw for you guys? I'm thinking I like the big bear more, but I'm not sure. I've not gotten a ton of reps in with him yet.

Quote from calibretto »

How does this compare to Goreclaw for you guys? I'm thinking I like the big bear more, but I'm not sure. I've not gotten a ton of reps in with him yet.

I think im cutting legend bear for this. at least in the short term. if he doesnt pan out then legend bear can come back and continue to be mediocre.

Extremly small sample, but first impressions of this guy were more favorable than I was expecting.
However, the sample was in a matchup and a deck, where you'd expect the card to excel... so I wouldn't read too much into it.

I played a RB agro midrange deck that had kologhan's command and liliana of the veil vs a GW midrange beatdown deck that included this guy.

Game 1 On turn 3, I destroyed his Jitte and made him discard a card with kologhans command, and he put Nullhide onto the battlefield. OOPS. Nice first impression buddy!
My only way to kill it in the deck was with dreadbore, which I had precious little time to find. The play lost me the game. By the time I lost the game I Had both an abrade and a lighting strike in my hand, which I couldn't get 6 mana to double up on.

Game 3 he cast it in the early midgame, with combined pressure from a 4/3 knight of autumn. and eventually a verdurous gearhulk that sealed the game. I managed to chump it for a few turns, but the pressure was too great in conjunction with his other beatdown creatures.

It might be worth having that floating around in the cube for just that reason... "Mind Twist you *crosses fingers* no Ferrox one time!"

This is fair, discard being very good, and they is really no downside to cards like twist or hymn. I enjoyed playing wilt leaf liege for a while and this was an interesting upside. For me I have erred on the side of not including hexproof, unless it is head and shoulders above other options.

This is a much more tolerable form of Hexproof though, since the opponent can dispel it with a 2 tax. Won't lead to as many helpless moments, but it'll still keep the opponent from casting multiple spells against you the turn they blast it.

Having that discard-punishing upside in mono-color is super enticing. I'm still of the mindset that most games, this noncreature clause will make you tax yourself to get out a bomby planeswalker or deal with a threat, thus making your beast vulnerable, and it gets killed at instant speed. At that point, I'd rather Surrak, the Hunt Caller who could've gotten in last turn, died this turn and didn't drain me 2.