A two-power flyer for three mana will always be
powerful enough for Limited. The fact that it
can grant flying to another attacker means it
can create some nasty combat scenarios for your
opponent. Like yesterday's card, I just don't
see it getting any love in any other format.
Most of Blue's best attackers already have
flying or some other form of evasion, and with a
mere one toughness, it's a pretty fragile means
of getting a big ground pounder through. As I
also said yesterday, most people in Constructed
formats don't rely as heavily on blockers.
Trained Condor exists to get your attackers
through a wall of blockers, and that wall just
doesn't show up outside of limited.
If I'm not mistaken, cards like this are
basically designed to teach new players that
it's good to attack. It may seem obvious, but
it's not. I remember a lot of games back when I
started, where both players ran out of cards in
their library. It's surprisingly difficult to
learn that it pays to be aggressive, especially
since a lot of people see the worst-case
scenario all the time in strategy games.
Not only is Trained Condor good at teaching,
it's not too bad as an interaction either. There
are plenty of creatures where people say things
like "This would be a lot stronger if it had
evasion," and if you pair them with Trained
Condor, they do. For some reason, the first
thing I thought of when I saw this card was
Emrakul, because protection from colored spells
doesn't apply to abilities, but that's a bad
example. I'm sure you can think of better ones.
Magic The Gathering Card of The Day: Trained
Condor
Welcome back readers todays card of the day
is Trained Condor a solid creature in limited.
In constructed formats including standard and
other formats this card just doesn’t do enough
to justify its inclusion in decks, granting
evasion to another attacker when attacking just
doesn't have enough power level to justify
paying three mana for a 2/1 creature. In casual
and multiplayer it is a bird which grants it
tribal applications but most birds have flying
making it an unnecessary inclusion in a tribal
themed deck, the ability to grant flying is a
decent ability but more often than not your
better off running creatures with flying or more
powerful creatures in general. In limited its
super solid an evasive creature that grants some
of your other creature’s evasion, this is a
great ability stapled to a decent body and is
most certainly playable. Overall a strictly
limited card that does some work.
Today's card of the day is Trained Condor which
is a three mana Blue 2/1 with Flying and
whenever it attacks it gives another target
creature you control Flying until end of turn.
This isn't exactly a bad card, even with sub-par
stats of 2/1 for three mana, as it has evasion
and gives another creature evasion as well. The
requirement of another creature is similar to an
aura, though this can still attack separately
and the one toughness is easily managed by any
blocker, burn, or removal effect. In the design
phase other cards will just offer more overall
than this can and it is very unlikely to see
much if any serious Constructed play.
For Limited this is an easily underestimated
threat that can actually win games, working to
end stalemates with evasion or just alongside a
two or higher power partner to whittle away at
an opponent's life points. The low toughness and
three cost aren't as problematic in the format
and a three mana two power creature with evasion
is in fact quite playable. In Sealed it should
always be played in Blue, particularly if a
Flying theme is present, and in Booster it could
be drafted fairly early as evasion and support.
