[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Golgari Thug

[pokken]

It makes me a little sad that white's card draw mechanic is *reading reports* :D But...I guess it's fair.

[PrimevalCommander]

Pretty cool card. Decent stats, keywords, mana cost, modest card advantage. Everything I like in a white draw engine. I might have to find a spot for this in Oketra, since I like having creatures that make recurring value.

[Mookie]

Wojek Investigator is a sweet design. Looking at the statline alone, there are only five other creatures you can cast for 2w with a 2/4 statline or better and no downsides: Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, Losheel, Clockwork Scholar, Righteous Valkyrie, Those Who Serve, and Thousand Moons Infantry. There are a few more if you include 1ww cards and Vikya, Scorching Stalwart, but it's still a pretty rare statline. In addition to this statline, Wojek Investigator is one of only two of the creatures with flying (Righteous Valkyrie being the other), and it also has vigilance. I find this to be a pretty elegant design, at least in terms of the vanilla test - defensive statlines tend to promote board stalls, but flying and vigilance mean Wojek Investigator is an excellent attacker and will actually push the game towards a conclusion.

I'll note that while four toughness isn't that impressive in EDH, it is relevant in cube and other formats - it passes the bolt test and walls stuff like Dragon's Rage Channeler, Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration, and Brazen Borrower // Petty Theft. Meanwhile, two power and a mana value of 3 means it works with plenty of white cards like Tocasia's Welcome and Sun Titan.

Moving on from Wojek Investigator's stats and looking at its ability, we again have some interesting text - if your opponents have more cards than you, you get to investigate. White card draw that scales with the number of opponents screams 'EDH playable' to me. However, it's also more than that - you can lean into its ability by running a low curve or discard outlets and trying to get empty-handed for more triggers, or you could run Rule of Law / Thalia, Guardian of Thraben effects to slow down your opponents' ability to play out their hand. There's also an entire minigame it introduces around hand size manipulation - if you have a bunch of clues stockpiled, you can cash them in for immediate value or you can hold off and try to generate more clues. Meanwhile, your opponents are also incentivized to try to get empty-handed to deny you more clues. In this case, the fact that Wojek Investigator generates clues instead of drawing cards directly adds a lot of tactical depth.

In addition, I think clues are interesting. I'm not sure if a card that just said ', : draw a card' would be playable these days - Mazemind Tome and Reckoner Bankbuster exist and see some niche play, but I wouldn't call them staples. Meanwhile, Staff of the Storyteller and Tome of Legends are pretty strong in the right deck. In general, I think white clue generators have some tension due to white's limited options for mana acceleration - a green deck may have piles of mana to dump into Tireless Tracker clues, but I often find paying for clues or Mentor of the Meek triggers to be a pretty significant cost in white decks. Wojek Investigator makes this much more interesting because the fewer cards you have, the more clues you'll get. This means that you're unlikely to generate a bunch of clues you can't crack, or to have a bunch of mana with nothing to spend it on - they'll naturally balance out, which feels really nice.

Finally, clues open up all sorts of interesting synergies - Thalisse, Reverent Medium, Teysa, Opulent Oligarch, Carmen Cruel Skymarcher,Krark-Clan Ironworks, Zirda, the Dawnwaker, Academy Manufactor... there are a lot of cards that benefit from the ability to generate a pile of expendable clues. This further leads into the interesting hand manipulation minigame - if the value of a clue goes up, then so does your incentive to stay empty-handed to generate more of them (and so does your opponents' incentive to try to deny you more clues).

Overall, excellent design. If only I could find space in one of my decks for it. D: Maybe I'll toss it in my cube?

[3drinks]

Wednesday, March 6th, 2024; Mikokoro, Center of the Sea

[Dunadain]

only good in a small selection of strategies. (hello Xyris, the Writhing Storm), but I like tech lands.

👍

[PrimevalCommander]

Staple in my Zurzoth, Chaos Rider deck. Surprisingly few ways to make the table repetitively draw a card at instant speed. Howling mine effects don't work there. Outside of that I don't like giving my opponent's resources, at all.

[Serenade]

Multani, Maro-Sorcerer loves it!

[Mookie]

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea seems fine if you care about your opponents drawing extra cards. There are enough other lands that can draw cards available for me to have zero interest in playing it to draw cards just for myself - War Room, Bonders' Enclave, Minas Tirith, and Castle Locthwain are just a few options. I'll call out Geier Reach Sanitarium in particular - it gives you the benefit of draw triggers without actually giving your opponents card advantage. Mikokoro can still be better if you care about opponents' hand sizes (or you really want the card draw yourself), but I think it is generally outclassed.

[materpillar]

It's a cool land. I wouldn't run it for no particular reason. I'm very happy with it in my group hug deck.

[3drinks]

Thursday, March 7th, 2024; Primeval Bounty

Man. I remember when this card was the chase of all chase cards. Turns out getting free value for anything you do is too good. Who knew? But now it's a fifty cent mythic. Crazy. Well, I still think it's overwhelmingly powerful, so much value contained in one card it's a dang one card engine.

[Mookie]

Man. I remember when this card was the chase of all chase cards. Turns out getting free value for anything you do is too good. Who knew? But now it's a fifty cent mythic. Crazy. Well, I still think it's overwhelmingly powerful, so much value contained in one card it's a dang one card engine.

I usually say The List isn't a meaningful source of reprints, but it looks like Primeval Bounty's price decline started when it was added to it around Strixhaven. It was around $5 before then. I don't think it was ever super chase though - looks like it was around $10 on release. (source)

Sweet card, and I've been meaning to pick up a copy. It feels a bit generic in payoff, but still seems reasonable - there are stronger value engines available these days, but I wouldn't judge someone negatively for running it.

[DirkGently]

Honestly...I'm pretty low on it. I do remember thinking it looked pretty nuts on release - maybe that's just power creep, or maybe my card evaluation has evolved a bit.

It pays you off for doing anything, but the things it gives you aren't necessarily very useful. What's the average deck going to get out of this on a typical turn - 6/6 of stats and 3 life per turn, maybe? Comparing it to something like The Immortal Sun, another 6 mana value generator, what's more useful? Some tokens and counters, or additional cards and a cost discount (plus the anthem and the planeswalker lockdown, though ofc the latter can be a double-edged sword)? I know for me it's definitely the latter. And that's a colorless card.

These sorts of cards occupy a pretty contested slot. You can't run very many 6-mana value engines that don't do anything immediately. I think the vast majority of decks can find things that fit their needs better.

[Sinis]

Primeval Bounty is actually kind of bad, IMO. It's not "six mana do-nothing", but I think it's going to get answered, and probably compares unfavourably to things like Zendikar Resurgent.

What does a good 6 mana non-answer card without an ETB (or an immediate impact) look like? Etali, Primal Storm, perhaps. Warstorm Surge, I think. Ancient Copper Dragon.

Basically, I think it has to threaten to spiral the game out of control, and Primeval Bounty probably isn't it. Probably.

[Dunadain]

It falls into the same category of Zendikar Resurgent, where it's a 6 mana value engine, which would normally make it pretty bad, but when it's this good, it ends up being worth the price.

Having said that, as someone that generally prefers to make mean, lean decks, I'm not likely to ever play this card.

👍

[PrimevalCommander]

I guess I'm missing something on this card, as I've never played it and never had a memorable enough experience with it across the table to remember it doing anything impressive. Maybe I actually never saw it in a game, but even with solid board presence and a little life, the 6 mana didn't seem worth the investment. I'm sure it could create a big board given enough time, but I think my apprehension is that I wouldn't expect it to have enough time to take over the table. But in M14 magic was firmly in "ETB-The Gathering" mode and you wanted something to have immediate impact once resolved. Things are different now as attack triggers, activated abilities, and passive triggers are getting more powerful and desirable for repeatable value over one-shot ETB.

[Serenade]

My buddy's Yarok landfall deck used it. I think he could have used the slot better, but six life at a time became insurmountable quickly.

[3drinks]

Friday, March 8th, 2024; Plague Engineer|h1r

I love having an engineered plague|ulg I can bring back with dread return tbh. But I guess I play a different style of commander than the majority on the forum though.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Friday, March 8th, 2024; Plague Engineer|h1r

I love having an engineered plague|ulg I can bring back with dread return tbh. But I guess I play a different style of commander than the majority on the forum though.

I really like this card, but it's definitely a meta call. The floor is pretty damn weak, but the ability to stonewall a good number of token strategies is certainly powerful. This is in the upper echelon of niche playable imo, but still galaxies away from staple status.

[Mookie]

Yeah, Plague Engineer definitely feels like a meta call. It's certainly a powerful card against some decks - I know my Teysa deck would hate losing all of its 1/1 spirit tokens, and I can see it being brutal for human / elf / goblin decks. You can also just name a common creature type and hit a lot of random utility creatures even in decks that aren't focused on a particular creature type - human, soldier, wizard, cleric, etc.

On the flip side, there are also plenty of decks that don't really care about it - it's much less exciting if your opponents are light on X/1s, in which case I would prefer Ravenous Chupacabra or another source of hard removal. The baseline of 'reasonably-priced creature with deathtouch' means it isn't that bad in a vacuum, at least, but I would generally lean towards something more synergistic unless I had a specific plan for it.

[Dunadain]

I'm not sure I'd ever run it.

👎

[Hawk]

Engineered Plague is one of my all-time favorite cards, and having a full four in the sideboard for my best every tournament (a small Wyoming "Mox of Box" tournament that was "Type 1" right around Lorwyn's launch) was critical in smacking down all the white weenie and goblin players I needed to defeat to win the tournament (and foolishly take the $300 in store credit instead of the white-bordered Mox Jet). Plague Engineer seems good in dedicated Phyrexian tribal decks (a thing now, thanks to Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos), but the effect is too situational, too low-impact, and too feel-bad when it really works to be worth including in most Commander decks.

[materpillar]

Friday, March 8th, 2024; Plague Engineer|h1r

I love having an engineered plague|ulg I can bring back with dread return tbh. But I guess I play a different style of commander than the majority on the forum though.

How many 1/1s do you run into? Seems like an extremely niche hate card.

[kirkusjones]

Ran this for a while in Grismold, the Dreadsower to kill plants, but that list got so tight I ended up cutting it.

[3drinks]

Saturday, March 9th, 2024; Grindstone|P23

Dang I never knew it got a judge promo. And that it's never been reprinted in paper outside Tempest, an Invention. and now for judges.

[3drinks]

Friday, March 8th, 2024; Plague Engineer|h1r

I love having an engineered plague|ulg I can bring back with dread return tbh. But I guess I play a different style of commander than the majority on the forum though.

How many 1/1s do you run into? Seems like an extremely niche hate card.

Lots of token fodder, elves, goblins and utility dorks. It's like a mini Elesh Norn.