[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[3drinks]

Monday, May 24th, 2021; Primordial Hydra|m13

What a stark contrast to yesterday's card. The penultimate Timmy/Tammy card.

mod ruin: @Feyd_Ruin our card database is missing the Primordial Hydra art from DotP. I suspect we're also missing the Garruk Wildspeaker, and other DotP special promos by the same reason.

[3drinks]

Sad Sac their enchantment removal, then reanimate captive audience, but sshhh, don't tell anyone about my go to Ghen, Arcanum Weaver strat 👀👀

Ahah, I can visualize the situation: "Why are you just exiling the ... Oh ... I get it, that's why. Well, guess I'm ******".

Then you Recoup the Sad Sac for the next player's disenchants, followed by reanimating Demonic Pact for them. "See? I helped you! I gave you something nice (said with the knife hidden behind your back)."

[Dragoon]

Monday, May 24th, 2021; Primordial Hydra|m13

What a stark contrast to yesterday's card. The penultimate Timmy/Tammy card.

mod ruin: @Feyd_Ruin our card database is missing the Primordial Hydra art from DotP. I suspect we're also missing the Garruk Wildspeaker, and other DotP special promos by the same reason.

An old favourite of mine, I'm always glad to see it. I also own the DotP version which I like a bit more. See below.

[FenrirRex]

Not a card I'm particularly fond of, but I really like the aesthetic of fuzzy hydras. Up there with the strange head-mane design of Feral Hydra.

[BeneTleilax]

Playing this for three mana in counters decks and waiting for your opponents to spend spot removal on it or it to grow to truly hilarious size is an underrated move. It's too blandly ominous and unprotected to work well as a ramp payoff or a finisher anymore, but it's still solid as a growing, cheapish threat in a deck that can synergize with it.

[Sanity_Eclipse]

Monday, May 24th, 2021; Primordial Hydra|m13

What a stark contrast to yesterday's card. The penultimate Timmy/Tammy card.

And there ain't anything wrong with any of this. Sadly not as effective anymore, still a card I will jam when reasonably possible.

Not that Chase Stone's art for it is bad, I just prefer Aleksi Briclot's art. In a similar enough vein to Rebecca Guay and Terese Nielsen.

mod ruin: @Feyd_Ruin our card database is missing the Primordial Hydra art from DotP. I suspect we're also missing the Garruk Wildspeaker, and other DotP special promos by the same reason.

I can confirm DOTP Inferno Titan, and this generally.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Decks with synergy should totally use this. But as everyone said, beware: It does die to a lot of removal. Cards to use with it should be obvious:Hardened Scales, Corpsejack Menace, proliferate, Gilder Bairn, Paradox Haze , Cathars' Crusade. Doubling Season and Primal Vigor also exist and synergize with this deck, but unless you're in monogreen or Gruul, there's less reason. Oh, and Blade of the Bloodchief which somehow continues tobsurprise people on nonblack.

You can also use Kalonian Hydra to make all your d00dz this.

[Mookie]

Primordial Hydra is a big, dumb stompy card. Grows massive, gets trample, dies to every piece of removal under the sun. Also has +1/+1 counter synergies. I think that Managorger Hydra is usually going to do more, but it's certainly a fun card. That said, I do feel like other, more value-generating hydras are probably also a better pick. Lifeblood Hydra and Voracious Hydra are two strong alternatives that are significantly less awkward in the face of removal.

...that said, if you're doing stuff with Greater Good or Mayael's Aria, there aren't many creatures that get as bit as Primordial Hydra.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, May 25th, 2021; Yawgmoth's Vile Offering

This should see so much more play than it does. I wonder why it doesn't.

[MeowZeDung]

Re: the hydra - My inclination is that the clever way to play a lot of these massive dumb beaters these days is to let it keep growing until it baits out removal or you can threaten lethal with an attack (at which point the removal is definitely baited out), then respond with Fling, Ram Through, Greater Good, etc.

Basically never plan on connecting with them unless you have haste/flash enabled and someone tapped out.

Re: Yawgmoth's Vile Offering - 2 for 1s are sweet, but a five mana legendary sorcery is still a significant cost in a format where you can just Victimize a token into a Fleshbag Marauder and a Grim Haruspex or something similar. Reanimator from any yard is nice, but there's better ways to do that. Sepulchral Primordial for instance.

[tstorm823]

This should see so much more play than it does. I wonder why it doesn't.

The legendary supertype on sorceries is a real downside.

[Serenade]

My buddy runs it in Kethis, the Hidden Hand for decent-to-good effect. Hitting PWs is nice, but the sorcery speed means I consider this card for a reanimation slot first and foremost.

[BeneTleilax]

Five is just too much for reanimation, especially in black. Most reanimator decks I see already have a decent amount of their removal on sticks so they can 2for1 with much cheaper reanimation effects.

[Guardman]

I haven't used it in Reanimator decks, just decks with black that have a few legendaries + commander. Overall, I've been pretty impressed whenever I cast it. I can kill the biggest threat, while grabbing whatever is the best creature or planeswalker in any graveyard. It's a strong roleplayer that I feel is underplayed especially since people still have an aversion to spot removal unless its super-duper efficient.

[Wallycaine]

A big problem Yawgmoth's Vile Offering suffers from is that, unlike a lot of spot removal/reanimation where the worst case is that there's no good targets, the worst (and not uncommon) case for Yawgmoth's is that there's absolutely amazing targets for it... and you can't cast it because you don't have a legendary out at that moment. That's the sort of feelbad that's going to sting. Having cards be dead in hand at the moment they're most needed is... rough. And yes, you always have your commander available... but *having* to recast your commander can easily push this up to being a 10 or 12 mana spell, which is hard to justify for the effects.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Not a card I'm particularly fond of, but I really like the aesthetic of fuzzy hydras. Up there with the strange head-mane design of Feral Hydra.

I too enjoy a good fuzzy hydra. Very cute and cuddly in a kaiju monster kind of way.

As for Yawgmoth's Vile Offering, the art is what makes it for me. Such a great representation of a major plot point of the weatherlight arc. Other than that, it's pretty mediocre. Legendary requirement is annoying, self-exile is lame except on extra turns/regrowths, and 5 is a lot for a reanimation effect even if it kills something too.

[Outcryqq]

Yawgmoth's Vile Offering is a card that I don't even run in legendary creature tribal - the 5 mana value is rough, sorcery speed is rough, and then there's multiple hoops to jump through: need a legendary creature or walker on board, need a worthwhile target for recursion in a yard, and need a worthwhile target for removal on board. As good as it can be in certain scenarios, it can be very bad in other scenarios, and I need my commander spells to be useful more often than not.

[DirkGently]

The takeaway from a lot of supposed 2-for-1s I've learned is that they're only really 2-for-1s if you actually get full utility from both elements. Is reanimating a creature a good effect? Sure, but not always. Is killing a creature/pw a good effect? Sure, but not always. And in this particular case, is having a legendary on board reliable? Also not always.

Add these together and you've got a card that will sometimes be an overpriced removal spell with an unexciting or nonexistent reanimation target, sometimes will be an overpriced reanimation spell that kills an unexciting or nonexistent creature or pw, and sometimes will be great at both but you can't cast it at all...and sometimes will be great on both modes AND you'll have the requirements met and will feel great. But at the end of the day, I'd usually just accept 1-for-1s for those effects so that I don't need so many events to line up at the same time, and I can get them at much better rates.

[duducrash]

Legendary spells rock. They are so flavourfull! I think they are somewhat poorly balanced. Having a legendary on the field is a cost and it should have a bit more upside.

[JWK]

I have considered running this card multiple times, but it never quite makes the cut. The cost is too high for either effect on its own, and it is sometimes difficult to get real value out of both. Toss in sorcery speed and, yeah, not yet. Maybe someday.

[knight_seb]

A big problem Yawgmoth's Vile Offering suffers from is that, unlike a lot of spot removal/reanimation where the worst case is that there's no good targets, the worst (and not uncommon) case for Yawgmoth's is that there's absolutely amazing targets for it... and you can't cast it because you don't have a legendary out at that moment. That's the sort of feelbad that's going to sting. Having cards be dead in hand at the moment they're most needed is... rough. And yes, you always have your commander available... but *having* to recast your commander can easily push this up to being a 10 or 12 mana spell, which is hard to justify for the effects.

I can't agree more than this ...
The legendary permanent requirement is especially painful ...

[hyalopterouslemur]

Legendary isn't as bad here, and unlike Fleshbag, you get a choice of which you target. Could you flavor mavens remind me of which of the Ineffable's horrid acts this is? As I remember he was already a monster in his origin, engineering a plague and offering patients a placebo just to see the progress of the infection.

[Outcryqq]

Legendary isn't as bad here, and unlike Fleshbag, you get a choice of which you target. Could you flavor mavens remind me of which of the Ineffable's horrid acts this is? As I remember he was already a monster in his origin, engineering a plague and offering patients a placebo just to see the progress of the infection.

Yawgmoth offered a trade to Gerrard: he would bring back Hanna, but he required Urza's head.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Okay, I was asssuming his bargains with the various Thran he met in his origin. Because what he did to Dyfed was also pretty horrifying and I thought I'd forgotten something. Having read Bronze Age (villains are genuinely sympathetic) and Dark Age (these are the good guys?), it was nice to have a villain who was willing to just commit genocide because he wanted to study the results, while presenting himself as his victims' savior. Of course the frightening thing is I can think of several cases just like that, including a couple here in the US. (Yeah, medicine really stresses this a LOT. One of those victims, his portrait graces every IRB in the country, alongside a woman who survived Mengele.)

I definitely remember now. I mean. she looked like Hanna.

[Sinis]

Tuesday, May 25th, 2021; Yawgmoth's Vile Offering

5-mana legendary spell is steeper than it looks. It's interesting that of all the legendary spells from Dominaria, the one I see the most is Urza's Ruinous Blast.