Today's card of the day is Den Protector which
is a two mana Green 2/1 with Megamorph for two,
creatures with less power than it can't block
it, and when it is turned face up you return a
target card from graveyard to hand. This
creature has a lot going for it and prevents
trading with weak blockers and the Megamorph
adds support for the combat effect with the
counter and card advantage which can be
something to increase power as well.
Auras, counters, and equipment are of course
great benefits to make this effectively
unblockable, though even without them it is
solid threat for low mana that recovers a card.
This should be a popular card in aggressive
Green builds and can see play in any current
format.
In Limited this is a solid first pick in Booster
even though it is slightly weak as a creature it
has both potential as an evasive threat or at
least a strong trade and can add card advantage.
There's no real drawback to running it in any
deck using Green and it adds value to the pool
in Sealed if choosing the color.
They've been very careful about Regrowth effects
in the last few years - much less Eternal
Witness analogues - and to be fair, you can sort
of see why. Yet this card is a callback to both
in many ways, even to the point of being
reusable in conjunction with other notable cards
from its block. There's an interesting tension
in its design where you're tempted to hold off
on casting it until you can recur something
significant, but its mana cost is less than the
cost to play a morph, and its face-up version
will often just be stronger in aggressive decks
than fooling around with megamorph. That means
you'll need to read the situation carefully, but
it's still extremely powerful in almost any deck
that uses green (again, much like Eternal
Witness).
