Warren Instigator |  |
| Creature - Goblin Berserker |  |
| Double Strike Whenever Warren Instigator deals damage to an opponent, you may put a Goblin creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. | |
| 1/1 | |
This card is, without a doubt, amazing. I feel that Standard's plethora of removal can handle it, and that it's not as broken as people make it out to be. A Turn 3 hit is very different to a Turn 2 hit.
However, I have a complaint. In this article, Wizards made the following quote:
"We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards."
Flavor, Wizards. FLAVOR. Warren Instigator PLAYS epicly, but it doesn't feel epic to me. Planeswalkers are one-in-a-million beings that fly across the cosmos and are incredibly powerful mages. Legendary creatures are heroes or villains: the most powerful, charismatic characters on a whole plane of existence. Even Baneslayer Angel, neither legendary nor a planeswalker, is not something you expect to see as often as a rare locale, or the lord of a tribe.
Warren Instigator is. Ignore the pretty rules text for a moment. What is Warren Instigator, from a flavour perspective. Let's examine the card as it looks in booster packs.
That's better: now we can see the art and the flavour text.
So essentially, what we have here is a Warren Instigator, which does exactly what it's name is. It instigates warrens. A warren is a goblin habitat, and Google defines 'instigate' as
"someone who deliberately foments trouble"
or as
"a person who initiates a course of action".
Now, Warren Instigator could be either one. Perhaps the danger is real, perhaps the danger is not: but in the end, what we have here, and this is supported by the flavour text of this card is, occupying the slot reserved for legendary creatures and planeswalkers...
A goblin that yells out to other goblins and gets them to come outside and fight.
That's all. Someone who says "Hey guys! There's danger out here, come kill it!"
So why, WHY was this mythic? As a 1/ 1 double strike that puts Goblins into play, it's strong as a rare, but certainly not Baneslayer Angel swingy. The Orb of Insight says that the amount of times 'Goblin' appears in Zendikar is 17. Assuming that this makes up seventeen cards (unlikely, since there's almost certainly going to be a couple of cards that reference goblins without BEING goblins) that's still not too many goblins. Let's even weight it towards commons. There are 7 commons, 5 uncommon, and 4 rare (and 1 mythic, of course) goblins in Zendikar. Note, this is more than is probable.
There are a total of 101 commons in large sets as of Shards of Alara. There are also 60 uncommons. That means that on average, there will be about three goblins in five packs: or 15 goblins in a draft.
This seems like a lot, but you certainly won't get every goblin in the draft. If you're lucky, let's say you get 9. This includes a copy of Warren Instigator.
The odds of you drawing a Warren Instigator in the first 3 turns are 1 in 4. Half the time you draw it, it'll be the mid-late game and you might not even HAVE goblins in hand. Add to the fact that some of these goblins are going to be weak creatures, and you have the chance of a blowout being very slim. Most of the time Warren Instigator comes out, it'll shoot out one weak goblin, and then it'll be a 1/1 double strike.
Contrast this with Baneslayer Angel, the other non-legendary, non-planeswalker mythic.
If you draw Baneslayer Angel one in three games, she will still probably win you that game if your opponent does not have the removal spell. If you're at 5 mana, she's ready to fight. Contrasted with the highly situational Warren Instigator and she's clearly too swingy for rare.
Warren Instigator is not, so the only thing I can think of is that Wizards has broken it's own policy to print this money-rare: essentially, they've distorted the meaning of 'mythic' in order to sell more packs. Warren Instigator isn't MYTHIC. It'd still be a chase rare: why should it be mythic?
What's your opinion? I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I'd rather think Wizards had an excellent reason for printing this card at Mythic than they forgot about what a Mythic should be, or worst-case, disregarded it to sell more packs.
The spoiler post will be on tomorrow, in addition to the tournament report. I just figured this had to be said.
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