A very interesting take on Hydras and Morph.
Hardcast the Hydra and gain the flexibility of
X, or play it early as a Morph, and get it as a
5/5 for 3GG instead of 5GG. Do you hold back the
Hydra until you can amass more mana, or risk it
dying as an ignomious 2/2 for the chance at a
turn-five 5/5? The conundrum is only made worse
by the Hydra's on-death trigger. If it lives to
die face-up, you get a brood of 1/1 Snakes as a
consolation prize. But it needs +1/+1 counters
on it for that to happen. All the more
temptation to hold off until you've got eight or
nine mana to drop it. But while you're waiting,
what's your opponent doing? What if you lose
because you didn't play that creature?
I like X spells, and Morph creatures, in general
because they help force "the oenophile's
quandary" (look it up) on a player, and that
adds a great deal of complexity and strategy to
the game.
I have to give Chase Stone credit for this art -
the hydra looks both snakelike and plantlike,
neatly combining the two strands in Magic's
hydra art. The concept for the game text is also
pretty cool, although it's notable how much text
it takes to generate something that could have
been relatively simple. I suppose the
association between hydras and X spells is
pretty strong at this point, though, and with
all the emphasis in new green cards on searching
for lands and the like, having something
suitably strong on which to spend that mana is
welcome.
Today's card of the day is Hooded Hydra which
is an X and two Green 0/0 that enters play with
X +1/+1 counters, has Morph for five that gives
it five +1/+1 counters, and when it dies you get
X 1/1 tokens equal to the counters on it.
This is one of the cards where Morph is
noticeably useful as it gets the 5/5 into play
two mana sources earlier than without it.
The tokens make killing it inefficient for most
opponents and sacrificing it, possibly to
Scourge of Skola Vale for a mini-hydra theme, a
viable strategy. This will see some play
in Casual and Commander, but other hydras like
Genesis and Mistcutter will compete with it for
slots.
In Limited this is a clear and obvious first
pick in Booster that can be a serious threat as
a 5/5 or larger even before the threat of a
token swarm is considered. The double
Green is a bit more than a splash in Sealed, so
it depends slightly on the strength of the color
in your pool. Whenever possible it should
be played as even without evasion or Trample the
large body that turns into an equal power swarm
is just too much of a card advantage to
overlook.
One of the problems with creature decks is that
creatures die. This especially can be a problem
when you pay a lot of mana for a creature, and
someone pays three mana to take it out with a
Hero's Downfall. You spent all that mana and
have nothing to show for it. The creatures that
end up being the most popular are often ones who
have ways to either make it harder to get rid of
them or give you some benefit when they die. The
fact that Hooded Hydra gives you a lot of little
babies when it dies is the reason this is good.
There will be times where there's a standoff of
big creatures and you might even kill it
yourself to get a bunch of tokens.
The morph is just another option here. If you're
low on mana or need an early blocker, you can
cast him as the 2/2, then make him big later for
5 mana. Morph creatures also leave an air of
uncertainty for your opponent. What is that 2/2
going to turn into? A Rattleclaw Mystic? A
Jeering Instigator? A Hooded Hydra? That
uncertainty gives you a psychological advantage,
as anytime you can have information that is
hidden from your opponent, you have the upper
hand.
Of course, sometimes none of this trickery is
needed and you can just pay 10 mana to have a
huge 9/9 creature and smash their face in. That
works too.
