Garruk, the Afflicted Bride

Hello Everybody! I am back once again with my thoughts on the recently spoiled cards of Innistrad. For some reason I'm not doing this everyday, maybe it would be quicker and easier to do a little each day... Regardless, there are some very interesting cards previewed in the past 2 days, so let's get right to it!

This card was very appropriatly previed in the From the Lab column on the Mothership yesterday, and can you say broken?! First there was affinity, but now there's Zombies! One of the most broken things that ever happens in Magic is when you circumvent the mana system, as that is what makes everything work right. Don't know what I mean? How about these cards:

Dismember
Force of Will
Daze
Snuff Out
Frogmite
Myr Enforcer
Panoptic Mirror

Simply put, this card may work fine as a bulk rare in Standard, but there's so much chance for overpowered stuff in Modern and Beyond. In his article, Noah explored Legacy and cards like Grave Defiler, but even in modern there's the opportunity for insane stuff to happen. How about that card Distant Melody? Drop a Grave Titan, produce more Zombies, Distant Melody to draw several cards, play your entire hand for 0 mana, Thoughtseize away your opponent's Wrath of God, GG. However, beyond that craziness, there's not actually a whole lot of use for this card. Regardless, I imagine it will be a great casual card going forwards.

Also from the Mothership yesterday, we have this guy who was previewed by Mike Flores. This guy is an absolute beast in a RDW or similar fast beatdown deck as he will basically replace Goblin Guide as the new "I hope he doesn't drop turn 1 ~~~~" If you need any more proof as to how insane Goblin guide was though, Stromkick Noble will deal less damage to the opponent than Goblin Guide singlehandedly until turn 5 when they equal at 10 damage a piece. Even though he isn't an upgrade to Goblin Guide, you can't expect an upgrade to one of the best red cards ever printed. I think he will hang out at $1-2 for a while and see niche play in super-fast beatdown decks.

If there's going to be a casual Zombies deck with Rooftop Storm, then this card is going with it! One thing I like about those 2 cards, is that neither actually provide card advantage, so we can know that there won't be any broken combo decks in standard post rotation. Even still, I could see myself playing this card in limited if I have enough supporting zombies. I just an M12 draft last night where I had a Throne of Empires, and making a token every turn is quite powerful! Nevermind when you could get 2 or more a turn! If you have 2 Zombies in play, your board woud develop like so:

2 Zombies

+1 -- 3 Zombies

+1 -- 4 Zombies

+2 -- 6 Zombies

+3 -- 9 Zombies

+4 -- 13 Zombies

+6 -- 19 Zombies

+9 -- 28 Zombies

+14 -- 42 Zombies

And if you still haven't won by now you deserve to lose.... The only thing against this card is that it doesn't actually do anything by itself, so that's very important to keep in mind if you open any of him at the pre-release.

And finally, we have our 5 ability double faced Garruk. Called it! In my previous post right at the end I gave my idea for what this new Garruk might be, and I am 0/5 on the abilities, but in terms of green front, OP black/green on the back I was right on, so I get SOME credit right? Regardless, as expected this Garruk is a very tough nut to crack. My verdict? He's incredibly good and will absolutely see play, but in terms of what he can be best used for is a very different question. Garruk Wildspeaker was fantastic because if he wasn't countered he basically threatened lethal next turn. Garruk, like Liliana, is more of a toolbox planeswalker. In fact, his "ultimate" ability is probably the weakest of them all!

0: Garruk Relentless deals 3 damage to target creature. That creature deals damage equal to its power to him.

This is a very flavorful ability in that you basically are playing a 3/3 beast for 3G that attacks creatures Yu-Gi-Oh style as opposed to players. This is fairly ground-breaking for a green permanent to have this ability. We haven't seen anything like this since Master of the Wild Hunt in M10. A very important thing to note is that this is the only way that Garruk can flip himself over without getting attacked by your opponent's creatures/burn spells. A big play I'm sure will be commonplace soon is:

You: play a 3-drop creature

They: play Fiend Hunter and exile your creature

You: play Garruk, fight the Fiend Hunter, returning your creature and flipping Garruk

That play is simply SO good and puts you very far ahead on the board position. This also gives you access to the far more powerful abilities on the back side, but we will get to those in a minute.

0: Put a 2/2 green Wolf token into play

Token-making planeswalkers seems to be the norm all of a sudden with our Elspeths and Garruks (all 5 now make tokens!), and the ability is simply incredibly powerful. I can see Garruk being played solely for this ability. While he doesn't + while making tokens, which Elspeth, Knight-Errant did (which helps protect your planeswalker), he does produce bigger tokens, which makes up for that loss. Even if Garruk gets Incinerated immediatly, you still traded 1-for-1 with your opponent's card and still have a 2/2 kicking around, which is great value (Walmart!). Also, it is relevant to note that you could drop Garruk, make a wolf, then next turn kill your own Wolf to flip Garruk. Once he is flipped, there are many sweet abilities at your disposal:

+1: Put a 1/1 black Wolf token into play with deathtouch

The only complaint that can be made of this ability is that we now have 2 tokens made by the same planeswalker of 2 different sizes, but retain the same subtype.... The reason for this is they want to make Werewolves and normal Wolves to play nice together (note: Howlpack Alpha is a lord for Werewolves AND Wolves). Regardless, adding deathtouch to the tokens that get pumped out every turn makes an insane difference, especially if you're playing Garruk in a control deck. Simply put, this ability wins games completely by itself

-1 Sacrifice a creature: Search your library for a creature card and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library

This ability is quite powerful! This triggers Morbid by itself, which makes me wonder if Morbid.dec will be viable when Innistrad gets released. I don't think it will with just Innistrad, which then brings me to the other Morbid deck I'm working on: Birthing Pod. Garruk works very well as extra Birthing Pods by sacrificing creatures and tutoring up other creatures, although obviously this isn't as good in that department. Regardless, I can absolutely see myself playing 2-3 in a Birthing Pod deck with a Morbid subtheme. This very much as the ability to be broken, so keep that in mind when looking at all other cards spoiled.

-3: Creatures you control gain trample and +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of creature cards in your graveyard

Frankly I feel this is the weakest ability on Garruk. It's really hard to get enough creatures in your graveyard to make this a complete blowout, but once again I feel the most efficiant way (besides self-milling) is in the Birhting Pod deck, as if there's creatures in your graveyard, your probably doing things right, and this ability can give a +5/+5 and trample and end the game before you even have to get up to Sheolred, Whispering One

Overall, I feel like Garruk will be a very natural fit into the Birthing Pod deck, so that should be a deck you will hear more about off this blog after the spoiler season ends. I am very excited for Innisrad has to offer, but there's a Pro Tour going on right now, and a Financial article that has a ton to cover since I last posted in June. So until next time, stay classy!