Tag Archives: creature

Unusual MTG Creature Types, part 5: Shade

September 5, 2013 Robin Leave a comment

To wrap up this little series on unusual Magic: the Gathering creatures, I’ll end with the Shades, which are a small but interesting part of Black’s pool of creatures. As you’ll soon see, Shades give Black a little more combat punch than it usually gets!

What Do the Shades Do?

Almost all of the Shades work off the mechanic of paying a certain amount of mana to get +1/+1 till end of turn, like Nantuko Shade at left. This amount of mana can be paid as many times as possible, so you can easily end up with a ridiculously powerful Shade swinging at your opponent! (Black doesn’t get such combat-ready creatures very often, so this can give an otherwise control-based deck another way to win.)

Several of the Shades also manipulate mana in various ways, whether enabling you to search for it, giving you more mana per tapped land, or allowing you to sack lands to give it further +1/+1 boosts till end of turn. Other than that, there are a few scattered combat-aiding abilities like flying, regeneration, defender, fear, swampwalk and haste floating around the Shade creature type.

With 26 Shades printed thus far, most of them black (only 1 white and 1 red/black Shade exist), they can make a neat Black creature-based deck if one is so inclined. Their mana curve runs from 1 to 6, with most of them hovering around 4 mana.

More Examples of Shades

All card images are from MagicCards.info.

Further Research: Complete List of Shades in Magic: the Gathering

Shade: Gatherer Search

Thursday in the Zone

Unusual MTG Creature Types, part 4: Ooze

August 29, 2013 Robin Leave a comment

Okay, all grossness and revulsion aside, Ooze IS indeed a creature type in Magic: the Gathering (even though only 23 exist to date). It’s a type that is not often explored on its own merits, but finds itself worked into various generic-creature-type strategies. Let me show you:

What Do the Oozes Do?

Oozes are all about +1/+1 counters, thematically speaking, even though their specific abilities vary quite widely among the 23 Ooze creatures printed. There are a couple with Deathtouch, one with Indestructible, and a few with cumulative upkeep costs, but even the cumulative upkeep costs have benefits resulting in +1/+1 counters. Depending on which Ooze you run, you can get +1/+1 counters for:

playing other, larger creatures (like Experiment One, at left)
sacking other creatures (like Gobbling Ooze)
attacking (like Predator Ooze)
tapping (like Experiment Kraj)
playing a black or green permanent (like Bloodhall Ooze)
playing any spell (like Manaplasm)

(There are plenty more abilities contained within the Ooze creature type which give you +1/+1 counters–it just depends on what you need.)

Oozes are mostly printed in Green, with a few Red and Black scattered among them; there is Blue involved in the casting costs of a few Oozes as well, though not many. The mana curve runs from 1 to 7. (There are also a couple of Unhinged joke cards that have the Ooze creature type, so be ready to laugh at some of their abilities!)

Other Examples of the Ooze Creature Type

All images from MagicCards.info

Further Research: Complete List of Ooze Creatures in Magic: the Gathering

Gatherer Search: Ooze

Thursday in the Zone

Unusual MTG Creature Types, part 2: Orc

August 15, 2013 Robin Leave a comment

Continuing my foray into obscure M:TG creature types (begun last week with Sphinxes), here’s one that I bet many modern players haven’t even heard of: Orc. For that matter, many old-school Magic players probably don’t remember Orcs, either. But, as I’ll demonstrate, Orcs aren’t necessarily a forgettable or useless creature type–actually, they have some useful abilities!

What Do Orcs Do?

With only 20 creatures in the entire game bearing the “Orc” creature type, Orcs are a rare and interesting side of Red. Not quite as efficient as Goblins, Orc creatures are often used as support cards for general Red decks rather than being used in a tribal deck of their own. In fact, the most prevalent of Orc abilities is a hindrance–many of them cannot block creatures power 2 or greater, and some have conditional abilities to attack or block based on the color or number of creatures attacking or blocking.

But going beyond Orcs’ handicap, they provide a risk-based control strategy, just like Red likes it. Many Orcs allow you to sacrifice something on your field (a creature, a land, an artifact, etc.) to deal damage, get a P/T bonus to your creatures, or other bonuses. Others deal damage merely by tapping, and some sack themselves to deal damage or destroy lands. There is even an Orc that allows you to look at the top 3 cards of any player’s library (take that, Sensei’s Divining Top!).

Several Orcs are just 1 red mana to play, and the most expensive are Orcish Squatters and Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper, both at 5 mana. (Mana isn’t necessarily an issue for the Orcs, but since some of them sacrifice land, it’s better that they cost relatively less.) This feature allows them to fit into generic Red decks with a little more ease.

Overall, the Orcs printed thus far offer Red decks some much-needed utility; they aren’t necessarily meant for combat, since most of them are 1/1s or 2/2s. But including a few Orcs may just enable your Red deck to do more control and resource management than it has before–you just have to be willing to take the risk!

More Examples of Orcs

All card images retrieved from MagicCards.info.

Further Research: Complete Orc List

Find the complete list of Orcs on Gatherer: Orc Search

Thursday in the Zone

Unusual M:TG Creature Types, part 1: Sphinx

August 8, 2013 Robin 1 Comment

With all the popular decks built around ubiquitous creature types (such as Elves, Fairies, Merfolk, Elves, Angels, Goblins, Elves, Zombies, Clerics, and did I mention Elves? LOL!), many of the other, less-printed creature types can go by unnoticed. As a direct result of both number of creatures printed and “the new hot decks” being played to death in tournaments, most MTG players don’t often get to dig into these rarer creature types (which is what spurred this new series of blog posts).

Thus, I begin my “Unusual Creature Types” series with a personal favorite rare creature type: the Sphinxes!

What Do the Sphinxes Do?

Basically, the Sphinx creature type is Blue’s answer to Angels. Sphinx of the Steel Wind, at left, is as close to Akroma, Angel of Wrath as you can get (all that’s different about her abilities is what colors she’s got protection from, and the lifelink instead of haste).

Aside from flying like Angels, however, the 27 Sphinxes printed so far in M:TG operate very differently from their White counterparts. Sphinxes provide a lot of card draw, offer a fair amount of synergy with artifacts, and have neat mechanics where you can name a card and then do something cool with that information (like Isperia the Inscrutable’s ability, seen below). Otherwise, Sphinxes can manipulate cards, shuffle and search libraries, mill opponents, or glance ahead at the top card of your deck.

The cheapest Sphinx so far is Vexing Sphinx, at 3 mana; the most expensive Sphinxes are 8 mana (both Sphinx Sovereign and Sphinx of the Steel Wind cost this much)–the mana curve is very similar to Angels. Primarily, Sphinxes are Blue, but a few splash in White and Black; they feature huge power and toughness (but, unlike Angels, their toughnesses are often larger than their powers). Sphinxes can definitely handle combat, but only a few of their number actually deal with boosting P/T or are given combat-centric abilities such as vigilance.

Overall, Sphinxes are a really interesting addition to Blue; they take the Angels’ basic combat numbers and add card draw and manipulation to the mix. I like ’em–how about you?

Other Examples of the Sphinx Creature Type

(Images of cards retrieved from MagicCards.info)

Further Research: Complete List of Sphinxes in Magic: the Gathering

Gatherer Search: Sphinx