MTG Salvation

I've recently gotten fed up with Cathar's Crusade. Not with opponents using it against me, but actually playing it myself because tracking the counters on every single creature quickly becomes insufferable. It's fine when a lot of creatures enter at the same time, but I'm using it with Emmara, Soul of the Accord and Ghave, Guru of Spores. This means the creatures often all enter one after the other and the boardstate ends up a mess of creatures who all have slightly different stats.

So I'm looking to replace the card and I'm aware it's best in class, so I'm ready to take a power hit, but I'm looking to minimize it as much as I can. However, are there any cards who do the job even remotely as well? Cathar's Crusade offers both extreme potential for explosiveness (I recently got 200 400/400 pegasi off it thanks to Storm Herd and Doubling Season) and resilience, as the counters stick around even when it's gone.

Some alternatives I've thought of so far:

- Crescendo of War. This could reach similiar heights in terms of value for mana, but I'm very wary of buffing my enemies as well.
- Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest and Maw of the Obzedat. Those can also scale rather well with bigger boards, but only work in sac-based decks.
- Craterhoof Behemoth and Triumph of the Hordes are some of the most obvious candidates, but can only be used once.

Are there any really good candidates I've missed? Let me know if you have any further ideas, I'd love to hear them!

I feel that Beastmaster Ascension does what you want fairly well. It does not give unbounded big creatures, but if you do not want to fidle with it, then that seems to work. Alternately, Mirror entity is also good at it.

God-Eternal Rhonas?

Thanks for the suggestions! Beastmaster Ascension probably comes closest in sheer (permanent) power level, I feel stupid for forgetting that card. Mirror Entity is also a cool idea, though it's a much bigger mana investment. Jazal Goldmane and Kamahl, Fist of Krosa might be other options in a similiar vein.

God Eternal Rhonas is very strong, but I think you want him in a different deck than Cathar's Crusade. He seems less about buffing swarms and more about creatures that are already huge.

I like Pathbreaker Ibex, but you need to reliably have bigger creatures for it to shine.

In those colors you could consider Dictate of Heliod or Collective Blessing

A lesser known card that is similar to Mirror Entity is Leonin Sun Standard

FWIW, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest comes with the same issues. And I totally get it, it's very hard to visually represent counters on a creature. There's got to be options for an easy way to do it, but I can't think of one that works on this sort of scale.

Beastmaster Ascension is your next best bet. Quick and easy to switch on for a solid boost.

Just play on modo, all your counter woes are gone. Or play it in Ghave where it's pretty well accepted that resolving Cathar's with Ghave on board is a win anyway.

Use d20s.

Quote from Dunharrow »

I like Pathbreaker Ibex, but you need to reliably have bigger creatures for it to shine.

Yes, but you are in green. I'm sure you'll think of something.

I find this topic interesting because Cathars' Crusade is probably one of my most favorite cards, and the bookkeeping for the +1/+1 counters has never really been an issue for me.

There are cards that gives a temporary bonus for each creature that enters the battlefield in Goldnight Commander and Valor in Akros. They are obviously worse because they are temporary, but you don't need a box of dice to keep track.

I think that to eliminate any bookkepping, you can just go with straight anthem effects. Beastmaster Ascension, Collective Blessing, and Dictate of Heliod have all been mentioned and I can vouch for them all. There are also effects that pump the whole team that scale with the number of creatures you control such as Coat of Arms or Door of Destinies, but you do have tribal and other considerations to take into account.

If you are okay with temporary effects, you can just run one of several Overrun effects like Craterhoof Behemoth, Garruk Wildspeaker, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, or Mirror Entity.

You know, I think you are missing out on a possible trick with the stack that you can do to help with your issue. You mention having issues with Ghave, but you can activate Ghave, put the Saproling in play, put the Cathars' Crusade ability on the stack, and in response activate Ghave again. You do this for as many Saprolings you intend to put into play, then let all the Cathars' Crusade triggers happen with all your Saprolings on the battlefield and each one gets the same number (and maximum number) of counters.

There's always Elesh norn, grand cenobite.

Quote from toctheyounger77 »

FWIW, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest comes with the same issues. And I totally get it, it's very hard to visually represent counters on a creature. There's got to be options for an easy way to do it, but I can't think of one that works on this sort of scale.

Maybe you could have a long piece of paper with different number of counters on the paper, like none, +1/+1, +2/+2 and so on divided out along it (with a reasonable amount of distance between numbers) and then put the creatures with a given number of counters under the corresponding mark. This also makes crusade work very easily - you just move the piece of paper one step. Instead of continuing you could then switch system when the creatures are big enough (like a range for 5-9, one of +10 or whatever is reasonable) and say put counters on those giving the difference to the box (at some point, it does not matter too much though I think).

Call for Unity solve this problem because you only have to manage the counters on one permanent. Sadly is slow and needs a sacrifice outlet. In addition the threat isn't spreaded on multiple creatures making it so much worse.

I personally don't have any issues with Cathars' Crusade. It needs long on certain board states, so I get the issues with it.

If you're playing with predominantly 1/1 tokens, Mirror Entity will give you the exact opposite experience. Everything becomes the same size immediately (barring equipment/auras/counters) so the math is really simple.

If you're working with bigger and fewer creatures and aren't ramping hard, Entity is probably less efficient than something like True Conviction, though I'm loath to recommend that because that much lifegain is kind of oppressive for decks that are just trying to attack (which can be dealt with using many tools other than lifegain) whereas the lifegain is irrelevant to combo decks, which can push people into building decks that are overall harder to interact with. Conviction can be destroyed with a spot removal spell though, so it's less reliable once active than Mirror Entity or any sort of actual Overrun-style effect.

You know, you COULD make a makeshift spreadsheet on your side of the table, and have +1 power at the lowest row, +2 for the row above, and so on. So all you gotta do is shift the cards/tokens up one level instead of fidgeting with counters.

Not sure if it's something that's doable on your table(s).