My MMORPG fans in the audience will recognize
this as a pretty effective tank; not for its
damage mitigation but for its ability to "draw
aggro". Your opponents probably wouldn't waste a
kill spell on a 2/4 with no evasion, vigilance,
or the like if they could help it... but they
can't. Very helpful for drawing out one of your
opponent's (hopefully finite) answers so that
your real win conditions get to live that much
longer. Especially helpful against green and
white decks, since green likes to be able to
target its own creatures with Giant Growth
effects (and now can't) and white removal
sometimes comes in the form of Pacifism-style
Auras that don't actually remove the creature
from play... which means that Pacifism #2 still
has to target the Flagbearer. Can be super
annoying against decks that run Lightning Bolt,
since the Bolt has to target a creature it can't
kill alone.It won't stop everything, of course,
and is at most a delaying tactic, but most decks
only have so many ways of killing creatures, and
pre-emptively making them bend their strategy
around this effect can be a real frustration.
So. This is one of those weird cards. forcing
your opponent to waste a kill spell on a vanilla
2/4 is a neat ability I suppose. If it weren't a
4 drop, i'd probably be a little more impressed.
that said, it's got a fat enough arse to survive
a lightning bolt, so that's something. still,
feels a bit overcosted. I almost wish it were a
1/1 for 2 or something. whatever, it's fine.
I have always enjoyed this card, originally
because its effect was unique and later because
I was sure there must be a way to lock out an
opponent with it. That's harder than it sounds -
for example, some sort of damage prevention
ability will stop a lot of burn spells, but not
any that only target players or that target
nobody. It certainly is effective against cards
like Prodigal Sorcerer, being too strong to be
killed by one and preventing it from being used
on anything else. In general it often turns out
to be more of a one-use card, where it buys an
extra turn or so for another creature to attack
or use its abilities. But that's okay sometimes.
