Thursday, October 6, 2011

Card of the Day - October 6th 2011


What is it with the randomizer and green cards? Anyways, today I have a nice modern treat for you all in a card that only saw print a few weeks ago.

From the design perspective, I love this guy. It just makes sense that the human with leadership experience would carry that over to his werewolf half. Plus, a straight human lord or straight wolf lord would always be doing nothing half the time. This transformer pumps your team, day and night.

At the same time, I'm very disappointed that there's no straight-up human lord in white. Aside from Adaptive Automaton, this is the best we have. Of course, I understand why, and it's the same reason why humans as a tribe have never had a lord before. Humans historically have been simply too diverse, as well as being the crutch for development. If a card is too strong for x tribal deck, just make him a human! Easy, right? Which is exactly why the Mayor exists. Humans are simply too hard to balance properly for the sake of all formats. The tribe has everything from Hero of Bladehold to Grim Lavamancer to Noble Hierarch to AEther Adept to Royal Assassin. Although much of human history is in white, they're simply too diverse to balance accurately. The automaton was a great way to test the waters in this field, and it appears that no massive stack of humes has taken any events, so we may be in the clear for a straight human lord by the end of the Innistrad block. However, making human tribal will forever change the future of magic design. It's doubtful that we'll ever see a full human lord (with playability).

Now then, back to the Card of the Day.

The mayor has been a big talking point lately, especially for token decks that have been sprouting up. The human side pumps a team of soldiers from a Hero of Bladehold, Elspeth Tirel, or Shrine of Loyal Legions, while the wolf side makes some minimum 2/2s himself. That way, when he flips back, the wolves and humans will be just the same size.

Expect this card to see plenty of play for the next year.

1 comment:

  1. in regards to the alleged pumping the mayor of avabruk does to the cards listed in paragraph three, you are wrong. none of the tokens generated by any of these cards get pumped my mayor of avabruk. Elspeth makes white soldier tokens, hero makes white soldier tokens, and shrine of loyal legions makes colorless myr.
    so how is mayor of avabruk good with the cards listed in paragraph three?

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