Design Review of Dark Ascension—Green

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I'm glad they brought back Briarhorn. It's a fun, strong card that deserves to be simplified. It really says a lot about how far the original was pushed that we can remove evoke from Briarpack Alpha and still need to reduce its effect to keep it balanced. It's a bit of a shame that the growth effect doesn't match its power and toughness but sometimes we must sacrifice art for science. Or something.

Clinging Mists is more like Pollen Lullaby than Fog, but I'm happy the effect is in green and the flavor of mists that persist around creatures for a while longer is solid. Not sure why the mists care about the plight of the humans, though.

Crushing Vines is a fresh variation on the requisite Naturalize / Plummet effect. I wonder whether they asked Creative if they could find a decent theme for the novel combination before committing it to the file. This also gives me hope that there yet remain new ways to get staple effects into a set without reprinting the same old cards. Perhaps not for a core set, and maybe not even a large expert set, but even just for a small set it's nice to see something new.

Dawntreader Elk is yet more evidence of the awesome that removing damage from the stack has allowed. The choice to put mana in the activation cost supports the movement to create more shields-down moments and I approve. I strongly suspect this Elk was added to the file more to enable morbid in a natural green way than to support many-color decks.

Deranged Outcast is another impressive Creative feat. How do you make a card that would be a demon-worshipping cultist in black fit in green? Green gets a lot of +1/+1 counters in Dark Ascension. I'm almost surprised they didn't make Briarpack Alpha grant a counter rather than a lesser growth effect.

Unlike some of our other 'bad' cards, Favor of the Woods doesn't have great flavor or support the set's themes. Pass.

Feed the Pack was probably a top-down design. "Wolves eat people, right? Let's make that a card." I like it. Technically, it does nothing on its own. But it's not that hard to get creatures on the field and the ability to double their power, er toughness, is plenty enticing. The 'may' is an interesting choice. There was probably a flavor argument that it shouldn't be optional, and that must have been trumped by "but I don't want to sacrifice my Mayor of Avabruck." Should they have used the Requiem Angel tech and said "nonwolf (non-werewolf)"?

Ghoultree has affinity for creature cards in your graveyard. It's also a 10/10 treefolk. Zombie treefolk, that is. One of these has to go in every green Commander deck, right?

Gravetiller Wurm reminds me of Carnage Wurm. Scratch that, it is Carnage Wurm. I'd be more upset about the lack of innovation here if I weren't a sucker for huge green monsters.

I've heard frustration that the blue zombie deck is at odds with the black zombie deck. They're both happy to fill the yard with Forbidden Alchemy, but one wants to exile them and one wants to recur them. You can focus on one strategy over the other to decent effect, but that conflict is a relevant problem. Grim Flowering (along with Spider Spawning and company) also benefit from filling your yard, but don't want you to exile or recur creature cards out of it. On the one hand, it's nice that there are a variety of graveyard strategies, but it doesn't seem ideal that they're all at odds with each other.

I'm excited to see Hollowhenge Beast, because it confirms my suspicion that a 4/4 for 2GG can be printed at common. It's also fascinating to see how power-toughness thresholds vary at different mana thresholds. For a long time, you could get an X/X for X at three mana or less or at seven mana and above, but not between (rares excepted). I'm not surprised that 5/5 for 5 came before 4/4 for 4 because the jump between reliability of 5cc spells versus 4 is greater than between 4cc and 3. That said, if we can have Hollowhenge Beast and Trained Armodon, we can have Owlbear.

When I first read Hunger of the Howlpack, my jaw dropped. I have yet to seen it played to any less effect. Permanent Giant Growth is a damn impressive thing, and it's just not that hard to pull off in this format. If I'd designed this, I probably would've made it +1/+1 -> +2/+2 or else costed it at 2G. Is it too good? It's hard to tell in a block with so many very good spells.

I hadn't seen the art for Increasing Savagery until it was begoogley'd. I love that they step back from the super serious stuff for a bit of fun every once in a while. Savagery is a huge effect and very Timmy-sexy. It's also the worst of the cycle since it only does anything if you have an evasive creature in play and even then, it's completed negated by Doom Blade. For that reason, you only play it on Invisible Stalker and when you do, you auto-win. Everybody loses.

I spent about five seconds thinking of alternative designs and it made me realize something about this block. Normally green is the best token generating color (with some competition from white). On Innistrad, only red is worse at producing tokens. Does that qualify as nice variety provided by the Great Swinging Pendulum in Seattle or as a failure to satisfy players expectations or the strictures of the Color Pie. I honestly don't know, but it's interesting to think about.

I wasn't sure how impressive Scorned Villager / Moonscarred Werewolf would be after seeing it in the spoiler. I had the good fortune to open a foil copy at the prerelease and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Worst case, it's Llanowar Elves that doesn't let you cast a three-drop on turn two. Best case, it's a Joraga Treespeaker that's helping you cast a turn three Hollowhenge Beast while swinging for 2. Nice variance. Oh, and did you notice that it's Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf? You can't tell me that's not awesome.

Kessig Recluse is the love-child of Giant Spider and Deadly Recluse. Sold. Apparently, this is a Matt Tabak design. He also made Scorned Villager, Soul Seizer (which I love), and Warden of the Wall (which I don't). Three big hits and one ground ball? Pretty damn good for your first time at bat. Wait, did I just make a baseball analogy? Nasty case of the 'fanboy's.

Lambholt Elder is a librarian that flips out... and learns from scratching up its victims (as Silverpelt Werewolf). Cool. I also approve of the movement to make werewolves better by making their human side worse.

I love top-down designs and Lost in the Woods is a slam-dunk. I'm not sure what else to say about it other than, more please.

Predator Ooze is nuts. How do you beat this in Limited? Y'know, apart from Burden of Guilt, Claustrophobia, Tribute to Hunger or a timely Dead Weight. Okay, so there are answers. Still, most of the time you drop this, it'll be worth three or more of your opponent's cards, if not the game.

Oh and this is another card they printed in DKA that might trump one of our M13 designs. Gelatinous Cube is less resilient, but it starts the assault early and grows faster. This is one of our attempts to push a card and I'm still not sure if we pushed too hard to not hard enough. Of course, that's all moot if it feels too similar to Predator Ooze. Your thoughts?

I love Somberwald Dryad. There's such a history of underwhelming forestwalk cards, that it almost makes me giddy to see one that I'm going to play regardless of whether my opponent has forests or not. Better than Grizzly Bears but not a high draft pick is a very good place for a card to be and I have to envy this design for that reason.

You should already know Strangleroot Geist is crazy strong. The only thing I can really add is how interesting the combination of haste and undying is. I've heard some players claim you can't stop it from attacking because it'll come back untapped and still hasty when you off it the first time, but you can kill it after it's been declared as an attacker. Even so, the ability to sacrifice it to, say Deranged Outcast, attack and then add Hunger of the Howlpack is pretty neat.

Tracker's Instincts starts to feel a bit rote after all the similar cards, but it does do it's thing in a technically unique way and it makes the completest in me happy.

What's better than a conditional 4/4 for 2G? Ulvenwald Bear. This is another card people have misread a lot. I can't believe that WotC's playtest groups didn't stumble on this just as we have, so I have to assume they decided the enhanced play value was worth the confusion. I wonder where that line is drawn.

Village Survivors seems to fly in the face of a recent tend to avoid such large vigilance creatures. Maybe they're counting on the fact that it's an uncommon in the small set. Have you noticed how much vigilance is in this set? I think that's more because of flavor than gameplay. Speaking of... Vorapede's crazy, right? My kind of mythic. Wonder how much Constructed play it'll see.

Wild Hunger is exactly what I wanted from the red-green flashback card. Better than, what Demolish with flashback, right?

Wolfbitten Captive is rare? It's nice how its activated ability makes it worth your while not to cast spells, but I have trouble seeing this as a rare, especially when Krallenhorde Killer is only a 2/2. It's also interesting that they doubled the activation cost of the werewolf side and not just the P/T. I guess you cast Captive turn one, pump it and flip it turn two*, cast something else turn three, and then just attack and pump turn four and after. *Here's a werewolf where your opponent might actually want to let it flip immediately, so that it's only 2/2 instead of 3/3. That's interesting. Interesting is good design, right? Right?

I love Young Wolf! It felt so lame that Doomed Traveler was so much better than Tukatongue Thallid. I also love that the only "french vanilla" undying creatures (this and Nearheath Stalker) don't suck. Simpler cards need to not be always worse.

I haven't played as much DKA-INN Limited as I'd like, so this may be inaccurate, but I feel like green's been given more reason to stay green in this block than is often the case, rather than acting as the glue for two or more other colors and that's a good thing.