When I first went through the new Greens in Dragons, I thought the pattern would remain the same. But as we'll see by the end of my critique, Dragons of Tarkir gives this color some love like it hasn't seen in quite some time. There are pieces for a tough as nails Stompy build.
So get out your hammers, comrades. Cabel's Critique of a New Release: Dragons of Tarkir - Green Commons for Standard Pauper starts now!
GREEN
Aerie Bowmasters
A 3/4 Reach for four mana seems fine. A turn early for a 2/2 Morph does not. And six more mana for a 4/5 with reach after all that is too much an investment for me to be fine with. Megamorph still has yet to prove itself. Standard Pauper players would be well advised to pay close attention to what Limited players have to say about the mechanic once they have actually messed with it. So until the Pre-releases have concluded and the best drafters make their opinions known, we can't decide if this is a first pick or if you let it go all the way round the table. That goes for limited as well as our purposes here.
Cabel's Critique: PASS
Ainok Artillerist
At three mana, a 4/1 is rather aggressive. We'll have to work for our bonus, though. (I guess the counter represents an actual projectile for the crossbow depicted in the artwork, which is a win from a flavor perspective) This excuses the inversion of the small power/high toughness rule that creatures with reach usually require to be correct in my critical eyes. This is a great flavorful antithesis to the usual reach creatures.
Cabel's Critique: WIN
Atarka Beastbreaker
This is little more than a basic Bear that, if you happen to be winning already, you can win more with. And what's my critical verdict for win-more cards? They don't win. They fail.
Cabel's Critique: FAIL
Colossodon Yearling
Call me crazy, but I'm giving this card high marks for its design. The vanilla 4/2 Bear from Khans was the first of its kind. Here we have an excellent inversion that, as a turtle-shelled Beast, recalls how far we've come from Legends. I don't expect Standard Paupers to get too much use out of this card, but from a perspective of critiquing the designs...
Cabel's Critique: WIN
Conifer Strider
This piece is my favorite green common in the set. Four mana for a 5/1 Hexproof is threatening to both the opponents life total and to whatever board they are developing. First strike and sacrifice effects just got better in the entire metagame because of this game. And that artwork is just trippy and cool.
Cabel's Critique: WIN
Dragon-Scarred Bear
I also don't understand the Formidable ability against the flavor text: it's incredibly contradictory! This is collectivism (formidable requires more dudes or the help or additional spells to reach 8 power) clashing with individualism (the flavor text praises a single survivor as if he got there on his own...which nobody ever, ever does).
So for this Marxist Magic-player, this card is indicative of everything wrong with the modern culture of capitalism as expressed in Magic cards: people are too busy chasing rares and completely ignoring commons like this that possibly clue us in to how so few people even know the difference between naked individualist bias and thoughtful collectivism.
Oh well. At least it's a bear, my favored totem for a proper worker's (as opposed to nation) state. Can you guess why? ;-)
Cabel's Critique: FAIL
Epic ConfrontationA PDCMagic friend and I have already lamented the poor choice of name for this card and others. I suppose the name is fine. The art is cool. The card type is not what it should be to actually be playable. But it does give the biggest combined power and toughness boost to your fighter as any common fight spell ever. And then the flavor text really doesn't make sense. That's a sentence about regeneration, not confrontation. I tried to like this card, I really did, but I'm sticking with my comrade's initial verdict.
Cabel's Critique: FAIL
Another fine piece of artwork on the Standard Pauper metagame's second wall that can shed it's defender status and go on the offensive. The other is Theros's Returned Phalanx, which requires no real set-up, just two mana. I instantly imagine a Standard Pauper walls deck that actually beats face with relatively little work. Even if that doesn't work out, just the fact that a card can cause one to imagine such a thing and try it out is exactly what a flavorful Magic card should do.
Cabel's Critique: WIN
Guardian Shield-BearerSee those spikes on that shield? That's because this is the Spikeiest Spike common in green. Just look at that elegant mana curve design. Do you need a two-drop? Here! Did you need to kill a key piece instead? Then drop a Morph on turn three, because on the very next turn you can flip it over as a 3/2 and make your one drop even bigger. Proceed to turn both sideways and smile, Spikes of the Standard Pauper community!
Cabel's Critique: WIN
Naturalize
This is the 15th time this card has been re-printed in an expansion or core set. The 14th time we saw it was in Khans. And that was the only printing that was fail from my critical perspective. I'm not talking about game-play applications here. With a card as basic and common as this, it's all about flavor. So what was wrong with the Khans printing that required Wizards to immediately redeem itself? Take a look at the Khans version and compare it to the newest printing:
Now the version on the left has a dragons skull as the target being destroyed. Naturalize has had swords, baubles, and statues, hedrons, and coffins of stone depicted as proper artifacts in the past But in Khans? A dragons' skull. Which, although likely fossilized, are still organic in origin. They are already natural and not at all artificial. So I conclude it was a flavorful fail from an etymological perspective. And the flavor text of the previous printing referred to organic remains providing a dietary supplement to vegetation. This is a logical contradiction: Objects that are natural already cannot be naturalized!
So WotC made a big, big flavor fail mistake with the previous printing of this card. Thank goodness they fixed it in this 15th printing in 2015. Therefor, even though this is not going to be big in the Standard Pauper metagame, I'm going to give R&D credit where it is due.
Cabel's Critique: FIX
Pinion Feast
I'm all about Plummet variations to give green a leg up over the flyers that it does not have enough of (another WotC color pie mistake made over and over again since my beloved Scryb Sprites were exiled from the Core Sets), but this is just far too expensive. All it does is Bolster 2, and Bolster isn't that cool to begin with. At this price, what should be happening is a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the destroyed flyer's power. Or something. If you're lucky enough to even have a creature to bolster in the first place. So if it's too conditional and too expensive and you don't even get an appropriate bang for your buck, you shouldn't play it in Standard Pauper, which is all about getting the best bang for your buck at its core.
Cabel's Critique: FAIL
Revealing WindEvery block must have a Fog. And it should have one connected to the mechanics featured in that set. I find the ones that match a debut mechanic to be R&D best way to demonstrate their genius. Moonmist is the best of these. This one goes with Morph instead of other Tarkir block mechanics, the best of which to utilize would have obviously been Raid. Imagine if you will a Fog with Raid: if you attack with creatures this turn, then combat damage from attacking creatures is not prevented. Blowout central, baby.
But instead, they go with looking at face-down dudes. I'm sorry, but that's not worth three mana. It's lame. This should have been 1G or just G for a strictly better Fog.
And as I've mentioned before, in competitive play, you should be able to guess what your opponent's Morphs are without having to spend extra resources.
Cabel's Critique: FAIL
Sandsteppe Scavenger
This just doesn't look like much from both a technical and aesthetic eye. You're going to get at least a 4/4 if he's the only dude on your side of the battlefield. If you'e got something smaller than him, then he makes it bigger than himself. I just can't see four-power for four mana being good in the format when it's plus-one counters and not creature tokens we're talking about. The artwork is rather bland as well. Not green at all.
Cabel's Critique: FAIL
Servant of the Scale
In stark contrast to the Scavenger, this Soldier looks like he will serve green aggro decks well. His ability is Modular that has been fixed to perfection. Now you have the option to place those extra plus-one counters on any creature instead of just artifacts. Plenty of cards exist that give you the ability to grant him additional counters and should he die, as creatures often do in Standard Pauper, you get to keep the counters you've invested in if you do not fail to leave your battlefield unattended. Placing them all on your second Servant of the Scale? Now that's a play. This is probably the best common green creature in the set and I dare say it might just enable a mono-green aggro deck in the format for the first time since - dare I say it! - Glistener Elf.
Cabel's Critique: WIN
Have any of my critiques put you on the defensive, yet? Well, too bad. Because I criticize this card as being too damn defensive to be of any use in a proper competitive Standard Pauper deck and I condemn it as useless in casual as well. This gives no cantrip, scry, or anything else of additional value to contribute to it's absolute lack of use-value already. Sure, you can block anything all day but your goal is to attack and defeat your opponent. I doubt this will see any play in the format. And what's all this then about bad cards needing to exist to teach players that bad cards exist?? Just tell them it's bad! Or, give them my verdict...
Cabel's Critique: FAIL
Sheltered Aerie
I have only one nice thing to say about this card but it goes a long way: the artwork is absolutely gorgeous! Kudos to Raquel Vitale for crafting this beautiful piece that reminds me of the Garden of Eden itself. Aside from that, ramp strategies have never fared well against the fast aggro builds and tight control decks that usually emerge in the Standard Pauper metagame. This card is for framing and placing on your wall, not for putting in your deck
Cabel's Critique: RAMP
Stampeding Elk Herd
Now those are some formidable ten-pointers! Any creature whose power and toughness are equal to their casting cost is going to start with high marks from me. Trample is a very powerful pseudo-evasive ability that breaks through the board stalls that are pervasive in Standard Pauper. And while I'm no fan of Formidable as a keyword, dropping a 5/5 is bound to help you meet the requirements. Running a few low-cost, high-power dudes alongside this gang of quadrupeds should allow a green beatdown deck to get value out of this excellent beater immediately. They present us with another reason to believe that a stompy deck might mount a trophy on the PDCMagic wall (see what I did there, sportsmen?)
Cabel's Critique: WIN
Tread Upon
Not a bad combat trick at all. Save your dude on the defensive and push damage through when playing offense with this one. Another great selection for green beats. The two mana CMC indicates this was balanced in play-testing, even if my druthers would be for a one mana pump-and-stomp spell. My only other criticism preventing this from being a complete win? I file a complaint regarding the matter of card naming for your approval:
As a Christian and a huge fan of Led Zeppelin, I've been waiting for a card named "Trampled Underfoot" forever. This was the perfect opportunity to print the perfect common. I mean 100% perfect. But instead of hitting a home run out of the park, the team that named this piece whiffed. Somebody should have spoken up and sent the name "Tread Upon" back and advocated more strongly for the correct card name. Hence the verdict...and I hope a dissent proves me wrong!
Cabel's Critique: BOUNCE
Those are your new Green commons and my criticism of them, fellow Paupers. I'd be happy to hear your own critical comments about these cards below in the comments. Or perhaps you'd prefer to criticize me! Am I an excellent judge of a card's character or should I remove myself from the bench? Whatever your verdict, I appreciate your input and hope you have fun with the new green cards in this exciting set as soon as they become legal...in less than two weeks!
Stay tuned for my critique of the new commons in Red, my favorite color of all time. As well as for an important announcement regarding real-life Standard Pauper play! Until next time, good luck & have fun! Peace,
- C
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