Subject: Non-whiny thoughts on Green in Stronghold (long) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:14:28 -0500 From: "Stephen B Laird" Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy Well, I think there's been enough complaining about green on the newsgroup lately (part of the fine tradition of pre-expansion angst), and I figured that rather than saying green got the shaft and what it should have gotten, I'd try to start some discussion about what it did get. First, my overall impression of Stronghold is that it's a very, very ... mediocre set. A few really good cards which will play a big part in the environment (esp. the soon-to-be-omnipresent Mana Leak), some really crappy cards, and a whole of lot of very forgettable, vanilla cards. After reading the spoiler a bit more, I don't think green actually got all that hosed. It definitely didn't get any really cool savior cards, or anything even remotely resembling control (unless you consider Provoke control). But it did get some pretty decent grade B creatures and a bunch of new ways to draw land and put it into play. Rather than do a card-by-card review, as some people already have, I'm just going to touch on the cards that I think are interesting and have some potential. Card text is paraphrased, so you may want to double-check if anything seems off. Non-Creature Cards Awakening (Ench., 2GG, At the beginning of each players upkeep, all lands and creatures untap) The obligatory "green is the color of sharing" card. I have very mixed feelings about this, but I do think it deserves a certain amount of attention. You can attack with all your critters and tap out, then have all your mana untapped and your creatures ready to block. Unfortunately, so can your opponent. It would be a good anti-Stasis card, but Stasis is largely out of the picture right now anyway. The best use I see for this right now is in some sort of G/U/x control deck. Play it with some good card drawing, and you can play threat creatures on your turn, then be untapped to protect them on your opponent's turn. Throw in Tradewinds and Capsize for real craziness. Capsize and Tradewind on both your turn and theirs and you can get rid of your opponent's lands awful fast. Him untapping won't be a problem if he's only got one land at any given time. In mono-green, you could attack every turn and have your large creatures available to block, so you can at least scare some of the other guy's creatures away. Could be fun with Tims and other creatures that tap for good effects. Burgeoning (Ench., G, Whenever any opponent plays a land, you may play a land also.) This didn't turn out to be the green Thawing Glaciers as many of us hoped, but on closer examination, I don't think it's all that bad. You can play a land and it on turn 1, play a land on your opp's turn1, then on turn 2 have 3 mana available, just as if you played an elf. But both the land and the enchantment are much less vulnerable than elves and birds. Combine it with Mulch and some other card drawing you can play an insane amount of land really quick, and be able to swarm the other guy with a whole bunch of Nature's Revolted lands. Another obvious combo is Horn of Greed. You're playing essentially 2 lands a turn, your opponent's playing one, so your drawing twice as much as they are. If they don't play land to prevent you from playing extra land (like someone refusing to let you Land Tax), they're not drawing extra cards from the Horn, while you can still play it on your own. Could easily end up a one-sided Howling Mine. Along these lines, I could see a Land Destruction/Land Superiority deck with Mulch to get more land, and Nature's Revolt and/or Verdant Touch as game-enders. Mulch (Sorcery, 1G, Reveal the top 4 cards of your library to all players, you may any of those cards that are land into your hand and put the rest into the graveyard.) I initially thought this one sucked, but the more I think about it, the better it gets. It could even become a staple green card- the green Impulse! Anyway, the obvious use is to grab some land when you need it, possibly up to 4 land in one turn if you hit a big pocket. People pull land with Impulse 3/4 of the time anyway, so there's very little difference there, and if you're not using some way to shuffle, there's little difference between your graveyard and the bottom of your library. It works well with a whole lot of different cards also. More land to play with Burgeoning, and gets land in your hand or graveyard (you aren't required to draw all the land) so you can more easily (and thank God with less risk) play Rogues, Harvest Wurms, and Fallow Wurms. I see this card as making the Fallow Wurm stock go way up, because you're much more likely to have some extra land to pitch and a 4/4 for 2G is never a bad thing. It'd also work in some sort of new mutant Ertog-style deck, with Fallow Wurms, Barrow Ghouls, Circle of Vultures, and Lhurgoyfs (maybe Revenant, too). You get land in your hand and/or graveyard for the two Wurms and creatures in the graveyard to feed the other creatures. It could be really nasty because of the huge creatures that can come out for so little mana. Throw in a few Hermit Druids for some extra nuttiness, and maybe a Haunting Misery or two for a game-ender. I like this one a lot. Constant Mists (Inst. 1G, buyback: sac a land, Creatures deal no combat damage this turn) Another card that looks really crappy at first glance, but in practice might be pretty good. Decks with a lot of green very often use Winter Orbs as disruption, and when doing that you often end up with a big pile of tapped land that isn't going to be untapping any time soon, so why not sac it for a good effect? As someone else pointed out, could work well in a U/G control deck. Primal Rage (Ench. 1G, All creatures you control gain trample.) This was only a matter of time, and I'm glad they finally printed it. The biggest surprise is that it's cheap enough to be used, and most importantly it's not a sharing card. This is a big deal. The other color boosters, since it is more or less a color booster, like this (Crusade, Bad Moon) are global, and this isn't. Of course the others are good in multiples, but you can't have everything. The use is pretty freakin' obvious so I won't go into further detail. Provoke (Inst. 1G, Untap target creature you do not control. That creature blocks this turn. Draw a card) One of the closest things green has gotten to real, usable creature control. This is special in that you get to pick the creature which you're hoping to kill. It's not just a big lure effect, so you can kill that one creature that's really causing you problems. Doesn't work against Tims, which can cause some of the biggest problems for green, but like I said before, you can't have everything. It's a card with a decent effect, and the fact that it replaces itself makes it really good, as it can even *gasp* provide card advantage for green. Volrath's Garden (Ench. 1G: 2, tap a creature you control: Gain 2 life. Play this ability as a sorcery.) Would have been much better if it either cost no mana to activate *or* could be used as an instant, but I still think it's going to be used. It gives your late game useless weenie type creatures something better to do than chump-block. Get a few elves out and you may even be able to gain more life than your opponent is dishing out damage. Because it's essentially a sorcery *and* has an activation cost I don't think it will become too popular, though. Verdant Touch (Sorc. 1G, buyback 3, Target land becomes a 2/2 creature permanently) I have mixed feelings about this, but overall it's not a bad card. Could be used in a Land Destruction/Land Superiority type deck that I mentioned earlier, and makes late-game land draws useful. Turning your own lands into Grizzly Bears can't be a bad thing. Well, that is unless they're playing Wrath of God, Earthquakes, Evincar's Justice, or Shard Phoenix, or... I still think it's worth some experimenting, though, especially since the creatures are colorless and can't be Perished. Creatures Carnassid (Summon Beast, 4GG, 5/4 Trample, 1G: Regenerate) Decent green fatty. Definitely one of the better 6CC creatures, but still, it's 6 mana so it just won't see a whole lot of use. Endangered Armodon (Summon Elephant, 2GG, 4/5, Whenever you control a creature with toughness 2 or less, sac Endangered Armodon) This got a lot of ridicule, but I don't think it's all that bad. Less than 2 toughness is much better than the 2 power that was originally reported, as you can still use Walls of Roots if you want to get it out earlier, and play it with Canopy Spiders and Lowland Basilisks. It's still really big and cheap, so it's probably going to be worth designing a deck to accommodate them as the primary kill creature Hermit Druid (Summon Druid, 1G, 1/1, G: Reveal cards from your library until you reveal a basic land. Put that card in your hand and the other revealed cards into your graveyard.) Could work in the aforementioned mutant Ertog deck. Grab a land, fill your graveyard up with creatures for your 'Goyfs and Ghouls to eat. To counteract the self-mill effect, you could throw in 2 or 3 Gaea's Blessings to shuffle everything back in. Lowland Basilisk (Summon Basilisk, 2G, 1/3, Whenever Lowland Basilisk damages any creature, destroy that creature at the end of combat) I think this is pretty decent, though nothing extraordinary. The 3 toughness is good, meaning it can survive blocking a Knight, but the 1 power means it will usually just get in unblocked for a few turns until you decide to let it chump block and kill something. One annoyance is that it must deal damage to stone a creature, so it can't kill multiple creatures without being pumped up, and it can't block and kill flankers. But on the whole not bad. Combine it with some walls and you could have a pretty sturdy defense for that G/U control deck. The Various Spikes- the verdict is still out on these guys, but I think the Spike Feeder and Spike Soldier will at least get some use, if only in the beginning. They all have the ability, "2, remove a +1/+1 counter from : Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature," in addition to whatever other ability it has. I'll just list P/T as the number of counters it comes with, i.e. Spike Feeder is a 0/0 that comes with 2 +1/+1 counters, so I'll list it as a 2/2. Elven Rite (Sorcery, 1G, Put 2 +1/+1 counters on 1 or 2 target creatures) was pretty much made to pump these guys up . Spike Feeder (Summon Spike, 1GG, 2/2, Remove a +1/+1 counter form Spike Feeder: gain 2 life) Not bad. Sac it to gain at least 4 life, provided you don't give it more counters. Put both Elven Rite counters on it and you've got a 4/4 which gives you 8 life when it dies. Not bad at all. Spike Soldier (Summon Spike, 2GG, 3/3, Remove a +1/+1 counter from Spike Soldier: Spike Soldier gains +2/+2 until end of turn) I scoffed at these guys at first, but I'm starting to really like them. My first reaction was, "Oh, great, another 4CC boltable creature. Just what we needed." But it's actually not boltable. You play it, they bolt it and you sac a counter in response to make it a 4/4 until the end of turn. Sure, it's a 2/2 the next turn, but at least it didn't cost you a card. The fact that it can double in size for no mana is pretty cool. If you need to get those last few points in, you can bring it in as a 3/3, then sac the tokens to turn it into a 6/6 until the end of the turn. A much less delicate Ball Lightning or Yavimaya Ants. Throw some extra +1/+1 counters on this guy when he gets through and you can deal a quick 10-12 points of damage. A must-block creature is never a bad thing. I like 'em. Spike Breeder (Summon Spike, 3G, 3/3, 2, Remove a +1/+1 counter from Spike Breeder, put a 1/1 green Spike Token into play) A bit impractical, since you're paying 10 mana to put it into play and turn it into 3 1/1 creatures. I think I'd rather just play a Mongrel Pack or something, although with this one you can at least give its spikes to other ones. Spike Worker (Summon Spike, 2G, 2/2) Spike Colony (Summon Spike, 4G, 4/4) The two vanilla spikes with no other special abilities. Yawn. Not good, not bad. You can pump them up or use them to feed the spikes with good abilities. Blah. Spined Wurm (Summon Wurm, 4G, 5/4) Another big vanilla creature. Yawn. Better than Jungle Wurm, I guess. Wall of Blossom (Summon Wall, 1G, 0/4, Draw a card when it comes into play) I actually do kind of like this one also. You're paying 1G to put a decent-sized blocker into play and it doesn't cost you a card. Definitely the best cantrip creature printed so far, but that's not saying much. It just screams, "Play me with Stampeding Wildebeests!!!" Paying 1G to draw a card and get a 0/4 blocker every turn is a pretty good deal. One thing- there was absolutely no reason that this couldn't have just 1 power so it could kill *something*. That kind of pisses me off. The addition of two genuinely useful cantrips (Provoke and Wall of Blossoms) can help prevent that stall that always happens to mono-green decks, as they do something good then let you immediately draw another card. To sum up the green in the set, it's full of cards that suck at first glance, but are actually not all that bad. The good ones are mostly just solid cards that make sure have the mana to do whatever it is you want to do. There's a lot of very forgettable cards in the set, in all colors. But at least there are a few easily splashable cards from other colors that will help green out a bit. My picks: Mana Leak (best card of the set. I'm expecting to get real sick of it, too. Will rock in 5CG, definitely planning to run 4), Tortured Existence (Turn late-game elf into big happy Lhurgoyf. Or more often have black player turn crappy creature into Nekrataal to kill your 'Goyf. But that's another story.), and Horn of Greed, since you can draw a ton of land with the new cards and then get it into play on both your turn and your opponent's to draw a ton of cards. Despite the fact that Stronghold didn't actually hose green all that much, it certainly didn't do anything to improve its lot. They went out of flavor for several colors, especially giving white some huge card drawing with Pursuit of Knowledge, so there's no reason that they couldn't have given green something really good that might be a little out of flavor. It remains that WOTC has yet to give green any sort of control, preferably in the form of the return of Stunted Growth style cards or something similar. We're also still waiting for another untargetable to run alonside the fantastic Jolrael's Centaur, and a really good 2CC creature, most importantly one that can kill a Knight. And of course, some sort of genuine, usable creature control. Cheers, Steve 2/3 for GG