A quick review on Conflux rare, Nyxathid.
This card is excellent.
I’ve only just seen it so I haven’t gotten a chance to chat about it with my Top 8 Magic compatriot BDM, but I’m sure he thinks it’s excellent, too. A few years ago he and I collaborated on a deck called Black Thumb. The concept of Black Thumb was parallel to Miracle Grow, only instead of growing your Quirion Dryad by playing card drawing and Counterspell, we grew our Dryads by manipulating our decks, destroying creatures, and tearing up the opponent’s hand.
The downside to the Black Thumb deck was that sometimes you would draw a middle turns Quirion Dryad and it would be this pointless 1/1 Green creature.
Or you would have to play a Green spell viz. Naturalize and it would not grow.
Nyxathid is very interesting as a “Quirion Dryad” given the Black Thumb model.
You are basically given a bonus of +1/+1 (upper limit of 7/7) for beating up the opponent’s hand. It doesn’t matter if you put a card in the graveyard with Raven’s Crime, on top of the opponent’s deck with Agonizing Memories, or just pretend to take it away temporarily (you know he’s getting it back) with Tidehollow Sculler… As long as his hand is nil, you have a gigantic 7/7. Draw step or so… still Dragon-sized.
If you play this card very early on turn two or three, it is a small 1/1 or 2/2. The opponent can [try to] sandbag the grip and manage the size on this guy, but that will sometimes be pointless (you go and get ’em anyway) or embarrassing.
Shock that.
“Okay.”
It’s dead.
“Actually, it’s not. You have one less card in hand now.”
If I just go ahead and concede, you’re not going to tell everyone I just did that, are you?
“Okay.”
Okay then, concede.
…
You’re still going to tell everyone, aren’t you?
“Obv.”
Well, I probably deserved it.
Aesthetics:
I’m going to go ahead and skip this section on account of I already wrote an imaginary dialogue, which is about as “aesthetic” as it gets with five minutes to go before the Cavs game.
Where can I see this fitting in?
Frankly, lots of places. This is a superb card. It is just a good creature in a Black deck that destroys the opponent’s hand, or could probably be a good sideboard card against Red Decks for mopping up attrition fights (he spends his last Shock, you go ahead and deploy your Verdant um… Thorn… oh, it’s actually an Elemental).
IT’S ACTUALLY AN ELEMENTAL?!?
That is a whole other bag of bananas, now isn’t it?
Smokebraider, Mournwhelk, this cat (err… Elemental)…
Like I said: lots of places.
Snap Judgment Rating: Staple (low) / Role Player or sideboard Role Player (high)
LOVE
MIKE
All Conflux
4 comments ↓
PS
Probably going to do a video on this one later in the week just because I like it so much.
So maybe there will be a video edit / update to this post.
LOVE
MIKE
What do you think of this card in Blightning Beatdown? It seems like it would be a good replacement for Gouger/Hell’s Thunder.
Oh, I really like this. It’s the mana cost that’s really effective – 3 mana means you can reasonably trot him out after raven’s crime or blightning to mise that extra +1/+1. Or in late game the cost is really great against mana leak type counters. Both on five mana, you slam this down, they cryptic, you still have room to negate and they’re down yet another card.
It seems there’s a couple of counter-intuitive mana coss this time round. Another one I’m thinking of is Bloodhall Ooze, the one mana critter you only want to play on turn 2.
Threads proof and practically Shackles proof. Good finisher in a war of attrition. Can be even bigger than a Goyf. Would have been great in the Rack decks as a finisher. Harder to kill than Goyf (Shriekmaw, Terror)
In Blightning, much better than Gouger, doesn’t have evasion like HT.
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