The Goose Mother – Wilds of Eldraine
Date Reviewed: September 11, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.00
Casual: 5.00
Limited: 4.63
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
This card’s name is close to the most obvious joke/reference that Eldraine could have done, and I still didn’t see it coming. I also didn’t expect that someone would actually think of a goose hydra – but that one was probably foreshadowed by something that went around social media a while ago, arguing that dragon art could be updated based on what we’ve learned about dinosaurs in the past few decades, and wondering what would happen if they looked much more like birds. Notably, geese and their equally terrifying relatives.
If that mana cost and general game text wording are giving you flashbacks to other Simic hydras, you’re probably not alone. However, I much prefer the play patterns generated by creating a bunch of Food tokens over “lol I draw a billion cards and win”. You can just sacrifice them all for more life if you don’t feel like getting fancy, or pay all that life you gained if you feel slightly fancy. You can combine her with anything that triggers off tokens or artifacts coming into play, or follow up with a Broodstar for two mana (if being a better green metalcraft card than anything in Scars of Mirrodin isn’t too confusing to you!). You can even just have her fly over the field and channel her nursery rhyme namesake by saying “Once upon a time, (I believe it was a Tuesday when) she pecked you 24 times”. She might be just as powerful in this format as the Simic hydra I don’t like to acknowledge was in its; but she’s way, way more fun!
Constructed: 4
Casual: 5 (there is no longer any excuse not to make a theme deck called “Untitled Goose Deck”)
Limited: 4.5 (have you counted how many cards in this set look for Food tokens?)
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
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The Goose Mother is truly a majestic creature, combining the horrors of the goose with the horrors of the hydra. It’s also surprisingly good for a hydra, creatures that tend to be a bit inefficient as a price for their flexibility, so let’s get into it.
The Goose Mother’s most interesting starting point is that it starts as a 2/2, not a 0/0, and putting X in will get you more +1/+1 counters and, promisingly, more Food. Food is back in full force here, and The Goose Mother incentivizes paying to make more food. It can then take those Food tokens and turn them into card draw…which it does at the rate of one each turn. So it’s an evasive flier that generates card advantage, and you can make it big enough to win combats as you need it to…and that’s not to mention the allure of just using it as a cheap beater with the ability to scale as the game goes. Just paying 3 for this makes a 3/3 with flying and a card to draw later, f you burn its Food token for a card, which is quite good.
I suspect this may be a card that plays very well, and the legendary downside for Constructed opens up using the honk-dra as one’s Commander, which is also a boon. It reminds me of a slightly tweaked Hydroid Krasis, and while that card’s upsides are different to this one’s, there’s still a lot to like about it, both at the head of a deck or in its body.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.75
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4
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