Can You Rate the Magic Card, According to Gatherer? Quiz #5

Oxidda Daredevil — 1.829

Here Comes Daredevil, the Goblin Without Fear!  This isn’t your Netflix original series Daredevil, though.  It’s more a 2003 movie starring Ben Affleck, horrible pacing, and a man who can kick through a stained glass window and catch the shards of glass with his hands without cutting himself to use as shuriken.  It’s so awesome, you’ll want to scratch your eyes out.

Oxidda Daredevil is an artificer!  Which means you can play Inventor’s Goggles on round one, play Oxidda Daredevil on two, and attach the goggles to the artificer for free.  Then the Daredevil can smash those goggles on the ground and punch your opponent for two.

That’s kind of funny.  But then it feels bad.  Because you’re wrecking your stuff… even your marginal one cost artifact was put in your deck because you wanted to play with it.  Maybe if the daredevil was already a good card this wouldn’t smart so much.  But it feels terrible to sacrifice good cards to a bad ones for a minor benefit.

There are a few artifacts you may want to sacrifice for a profit to Oxidda Daredevil.  Chromatic Star springs to mind, since you draw a card no matter how it ended up in the yard.  But most of the artifacts you want to sacrifice cost two or more.  If you aren’t casting the daredevil on turn two, then why run him in the first place? 

In the abstract, Buffoon is terrible.  But this elven patsy desperately clings to a niche of the Magic metagame, barely scraping his way into the theoretically playable plateau of two stars.

If  your opponent is summoning Elves that hit the ground running, this becomes your best two-drop wall (Buffoon also sneaks in bonus points for not being a valid target for Eyeblight’s Ending.)  Maybe elf-ball matchups occur often enough in the Pauper format that shoving a goblin clown in your sideboard isn’t unreasonable?  I don’t know.  I do know that I’d be underwhelmed playing this guy, even when he’s the perfect choice.

Wizards R&D test drove vehicle design long before Kaladesh.  Vodalian War Machine, powered by Merfolk gumption, was too specific, and killed the crew if someone Terrorized the boat.  Hollow Warrior was mechanically sound, but failed to supply any crunchy flavor beyond the obvious.  If any creature could crew a vehicle, then all vehicle decks would play the same.

Keldon Battlewagon hit an odd sweet spot.  It fits a specific deck archetype like a custom car part, while leaking story all over the road.  The Kelds constructed a giant battlewagon to transport your fragile, yet powerful, hitchhikers.  Pack the truck for a road trip full of cantankerous goblin, barbarians, and elementals, roll over  the countryside, then unleash your wagon on your opponent’s ill-equipped public restrooms for victory.

Unfortunately, the Prophecy developers thought this would be too powerful an ability to use every turn.  So when the battlewagon smashes into the opponent, it does its best impression of a Ford Pinto and evaporates in a ball of flame.  While I can respect their choice to make the Battlewagon not block (it helps to sell the narrative of an out of control juggernaut) the self-destroying restriction remains a mystery to me.  I don’t see many people complaining about Malachite Golem‘s ability to attack every turn.  And that card doesn’t ask you to tap your team to do its job.

It’s a shame it took early designers so long to learn an otherwise intuitive lesson.  Most players are repelled by drawbacks (and are doubly repulsed by two drawbacks on the same card.)  Sure, drawbacks make the game more interesting… but only if players are willing to run your card to begin with.  While the Combo Johnny archetype might accept Keldon Battlewagon, it clearly appeals to the Timmy archetype (“Look how big I can make this thing!”) By falling to pieces like a DeLorean rolling onto the factory showroom, this card loses its biggest advocates.

I played in a lot of Mirrodin drafts, and I know this card was an all-star.  A moveable +4/+4 in common for a reasonable price is excellent.  Even +3/+3 in a dedicated 3 color deck makes this card arguably better than Vulshok Battlegear, which was printed as the gold standard for generic Equipment, before it was watered down into Greatsword.

Mirrodin was an environment full of great artifacts.  The Bracers were, in turn, another unexciting great card.  And in Mirrodin, you could draft four colors without noticing, or caring.  That environment is rare.  If you’re playing Magic now, and can’t throw away money on splashy rares, then you’re probably packing a two color deck—three colors maximum.  Alternatively, if you have the money for splashy rares, then Opaline Bracers wouldn’t be an exciting choice for you.

If, however, you’re a budget player with a four color deck, then pick up the bracers.  It transforms birds into dragons.  It’s hard to find more bang for your dime.

We’re moving into tournament worthy territory.  Ancient Hyrda was featured in a number of Fires of Yavimaya decks at the turn of the century, which combined Haste with Fading to sneak an extra turn out of a stack of red and green beats.

I got to admit, I always wondered why this card was considered good enough for that deck.  Ancient Hydra is a poor attacker on the turn you tap out to cast him. It can’t ping (or throw one of its heads?  I think it throws its heads at people) chump blockers without a little extra mana. Honestly, I think the Hydra worked because it preyed on opponent’s mistakes, tapping a Ramosian Sergeant to attack because the Counter-Rebel player expected to Dismantling Blow a Saproling Burst, and instead got a face full of rotting hydra.  Maybe the real reason the Hyrda was used, though, is that there weren’t any good alternatives.  You could run Two-Headed Dragon instead, but the extra evasion seemed unnecessary in a deck full of giant monsters.

But it’s true.  Occasionally Ancient Hydra brutalizes the competition, slaughtering a team of blockers and swinging for five.  The hydra even makes a reasonable casual rattlesnake to hide behind, while you build up your hand, and your opponents attacks everyone but you.  Fading 5 resolves in six turns.  Plenty of games are settled in less than that.

A reasonable power and toughness, plus flying, attached to a decent ability, on a relevant creature type.  Tower Geist isn’t a card you need to apologize for.  It does its thing, attacks or blocks, and hopefully trades.

This card makes me wish Soulshift was better, because I wouldn’t mind occasionally resurrecting this dude, playing him early to trade with value, playing him mid-game to buy time, and playing him late to close out those last points of damage.  Technically, Forked-Branch Garami isn’t terrible.  And if there’s anything better than replaying Tower Geist over and over, it’s playing two Tower Geists over and over.

Considering he’s a French Vanilla granddaddy from the original game, Elvish Archers is looking good.  There are, of course, better options.  But 2/1 with first strike for two with no drawback is something Red dreamed about achieving since the game began, and only recently achieved in Oath of the Gatewatch with Zada’s Commando.

Did this card pick up points for cool factor?  Absolutely.  Would anyone really put this in a deck?  Probably… but only as a goof.  In a dedicated elf deck, Wren’s Run Vanquisher is a beefier card, and Wolf-Skull Shaman can replace itself many times over.  Heck, if you’re mono-green, you could argue that Elvish Warrior is the better card.  But card art and flavor text?  This is some of the best that the early game offered.  The fact that it’s still playable is reason enough to vote it up.

Wall of Glare — 4.127

As a rule of thumb, the ability to block extra creatures is rarely worth the cost (see also Entangler, Vanguard’s Shield, Echo Circlet and Kemba’s Legion.)  There’s a reason for that.  The ability, when attached to an efficient creature, dismantles the game.

Case in point: Wall of Glare.  A 0/5 for is common chaff today.  In 2000, it would be considered efficient.  That body combined with the ability to block any number of creatures resulted in a lot of flexibility.  The Glare could either prevent up to four power worth of attacking damage per round, or act like a Seal of Holy Day, chump blocking an entire team.

Things got real messy when you packed already good creature combat spells in a deck that happens to include Wall of Glare.  The key phrase here is ‘happens to include’.  It’s reasonable to play Wall of Glare without support cards because it is good.  But Shelter made it better.  Griffin Guide makes this creature a migraine machine, as it picks off smaller attackers while rebuffing mid-sized ones.  And a well timed Might of Oaks could result in a devastating one-sided board sweep.

Wizards doesn’t print many cost efficient creatures that can block an entire team.  And that’s a very good thing.

Tinder Wall — 4.358

Early Magic was flush with spells providing fast mana.  There’s a lot of competition for ‘most broken card that let you curve into your combo too early’, but I submit that Tinder Wall is high on that list.  On round one, it’s as strong as Lotus Petal or Elvish Spirit Guide.  If you can be patient and wait a turn before exploding your Christmas trees, you’re rewarded with a boost equivalent to Dark Ritual.

Once upon a time people used to defend Dark Ritual.  It was hard to imagine that a card reprinted in so many core sets, and actively avoided in many good deck builds, could be unfair.  But Ritual is broken.  It isn’t obvious in inefficient casual decks.  The card’s true nature only unleashes when matched with already unfair decks, warping them into spectacularly unfair decks, sometimes winning the game before the opponent takes a single turn.

But more often than not, Combo-Ritual players wouldn’t play their rituals on round one.  They needed to set up the first few turns of the game instead, draw some incidental cards, then blow up on round four, or five.  In that way, they were vulnerable to aggressive decks that rushed to close the game out with a horde of critters before the combo player went off.  That’s ultimately the problem with Dark Ritual.  If you die with it in your hand, then it’s a dead card.  Dark Ritual can’t block.  Tinder Wall can.  Your perfect grip may not give you the option to drop a tree on an attacking White Knight.  Heck, you might not be willing to block in case your opponent has a trick.  Your unwillingness to block is meaningless, however, if your opponent is unwilling to attack.

Pestilence — 4.481

Back when I drafted triple Urza’s, I never drafted black.  Why?  Because in every eight man pod, four of my opponents were drafting mono-black, and it was all because of this card (Okay, fine.  Corrupt at common didn’t help.)  And even though I’m sure that passing on Pestilence was always the right call in that environment, it still stung every time the flies swarmed down and consumed my beasties.

Pestilence is a horror of a common, doing something that commons rarely did, and are unofficially banned from doing according to New World Order design: wipe the board.  It’s difficult to find a modern common removal spell that will hit two permanents, never mind a card that can sweep the battlefield, and potentially stick around to do it again.

And stick around it will, assuming you build your deck right.  You could use the traditional path and pair the card with Wall of Bone.  Or maybe you’d prefer to pair Pestilence with the high-toughness-creature-recurring Dukhara Scavenger?  That’s fine too.  Just don’t forget that you can eviscerate the board on your turn, then slip a Diregraf Ghoul on the table.  Pestilence doesn’t care why there’s a creature on the board at the end turn, just as long as something’s around to keep the plague a-spreading.