If nothing else, I'm sure the Spear will slot in
nicely in all sorts of White token decks that
use a lot of "anthem" style effects like Honor
of the Pure. For one additional mana, you get an
activated ability alongside your army augment.
The "vengeance" ability is kind of like having
an extra creature with deathtouch available to
block... except you need to leave 1WW up on
their turn, and they still get to hit you. Also
instead to using flying or intimidate to get
past it, they use hexproof. If your opponent has
enough creatures, this might not be enough as
they whittle you down and you stunt your board
development by alloting 1WW of your mana to
killing creatures off.
But if you're running the Spear, it's because
you expect to have a lot of creatures, so that
shouldn't be an issue. If anything, the Spear
allows you to attack harder, as you no longer
need to leave as many blockers back as long as
you can afford to activate the Spear and as long
as your opponent doesn't have lethal damage on
the board. It also generates card advantage as
you can pick off enemy creatures one by one
without spending additional cards.
The two main downsides here are both on the type
line. Because it's legendary, you can't stack
the +1/+1 bonus with multiple copies like you
can with Honor of the Pure. And because it's
both an enchantment AND an artifact, more colors
are more likely to have an answer to it.
Today's card of the day is Spear of Heliod
which is a White three mana Legendary
enchantment artifact that gives creatures you
control +1/+1 and for three mana can tap to
destroy target creature that dealt damage to you
that turn. The cost for the +1/+1 is
decent and comparable to existing cards, but
adding in the destroy effect even with the cost
elevates this to a very strong battlefield
presence. Repeatable removal for a fair cost is
always good and it works both for combat and
non-combat sources of damage. Leaving the
mana untapped can be a drawback, but the other
effect means the card is not worthless even if
you have tapped out. Overall a very good
card that will be popular in many decks,
particularly token and swarm builds.
In Limited this is an excellent first pick in
Booster as both a boost for your creatures and
as a source of repeatable removal. In
Sealed it really requires White to be the
dominant color of the deck to maintain the two
White mana for the effect, but that is an
acceptable loss to keep an opponent's threats in
check.
Spear of Heliod is Legendary. That is my
biggest problem with this card. Most players
would want to use this card for the +1 +1
benefit to the creatures. The ability to destroy
a creature that dealt damage to you is a nice
bonus and it can slow down attackers. I know
that all of the God weapons are Legendary but I
wish that this card was not. Spear of Heliod
wants players to play 4 of them in a deck, but
that is just not realistic. I like this card and
at the same time, I dislike it because it can
easily become a dead card in your hand. I could
see Spear of Heliod becoming popular in
Commander or Limited.
Fun fact: although Heliod's weapon is clearly
modeled on Zeus' thunderbolts (since Heliod is
pretty much Zeus anyway), it was actually Odin
whose signature weapon was a spear. This card
was clearly designed for decks with lots of
creatures, and both halves of its game text are
very useful in such a deck. The only thing that
occurs to me is that your opponent may be
reluctant to attack because he fears the Spear's
retaliatory strike, which might mean more
blockers to stand in front of your newly
strengthened creatures. But that's a fairly
minor issue for a card as powerful as this.
