Re: [Official] State of Modern Thread (B&R 03/09/2020)
Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 6:59 pm
My two cents on Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath (and to a lesser extent Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger) vs. white. They are very strangely designed cards that do a bunch of things and all in a way where the answers that white (and this can also be extended out to other colors as well) has are either awkward, inefficient, or just plain don't work. And from my experience it is because of the following factors they both have:
- When cast from hand they are meant to effectively be spells with ETB triggers, meaning usual removal is not as efficient. In addition, the "best" white answer, Path to Exile, is especially bad against a cast Uro since it is just additional ramp. Usually if a format is having a problem with strong ETB creatures, white has great answers in cards like Tocatli Honor Guard. But because they are meant to be sacrificed when cast, they are effectively extremely undercosted fatties. In most cases a Tocatli Honor Guard stopping their ETB triggers would be a boon to them, not a drawback.
- They have attack triggers. This is related to the point above because it makes Tocatli Honor Guard effects even worse. Not only do they get an undercosted 6/6, but it has a great trigger everytime it attacks.
- They have built in graveyard recursion which casts them from the graveyard (and pretty easy to achieve restriction of exiling five cards). This leaves some answers which should be answers, like Containment Priest, doing nothing. While anything that doesn't exile them only acts as a roadblock.
- This last point is more about Uro than Kroxa, but it is both a wincondition, recurrent threat, and something that ramps you into/finds other threats/gains you life. Uro, and to a lesser extent Kroxa, is a swiss-army knife of a magic card, that does a bit of everything well, and requires multiple different cards to truly answer.