Today's card of the day is Garruk, Primal
Hunter which is a five mana planeswalker that
starts with three loyalty. The plus one
ability gives you a 3/3 beast which helps for
protecting Garruk or working towards an offense,
which is a nice change over the old minus one
cost for the same effect. The minus three
is a solid way to refill your hand in a color
generally lacking options for card draw and
should be used on the second turn he is in play
whenever possible to keep the plus one as an
option.
The minus six can fill the field with a fairly
large number of 6/6 creatures, though without
Trample or some kind of evasion it isn't quite
as effective against some decks as the original
Garruk. Despite that weakness the change
to the creation of 3/3 tokens is a huge benefit
With other forms of acceleration to support this
Garruk he works well to build a creature swarm
and draw cards, however the older Garruk was
both faster and could offer the Overrun
solution. Overall both Garruk cards are
good and this one will be played even if just to
draw a larger number of cards, so expect to see
it in Green decks in the upcoming rotation.
For Limited this is a big threat as a source of
creature advantage and getting the third ability
activated will likely win any game. The
card drawing ability is nice and will be used if
Garruk is pressured, but little in the deck
should compare to a swarm of 6/6 creatures.
Absolutely a first pick in Booster and should
make Green an easy choice in Sealed, at least as
a secondary color, and can be supported by mana
fixing if available.
Welcome to
another week of card of the day reviews here at
Pojo.com. To kick the week off, we are looking
at Garruk, Primal Hunter. The remade edition of
Garruk Wildspeaker costs three green mana and
two generic mana. His abilities are; +1 loyalty:
Put a 3/3 green Beast creature token onto the
battlefield. -2 loyalty counters: Draw cards
equal to the highest power among creatures you
control. And his final, -6 loyalty: Put a 6/6
green Wurm creature token onto the battlefield
for each land you control.
This guy is just sick. Wizards really went out of their
way to increase the power of these original
planeswalkers, and Garruk, Primal Hunter can
certainly pack the punch. The ability to put a
3/3 beast into play is nothing new, but it is
his add ability this time. I think unless you
are running a green/blue draw/mill deck, you
won’t pay much attention to the second ability,
unless your hand is depleted and you are top
decking. However, his final ability draws all
the attention, and rightfully so.
Dropping an army as large as the lands you have is nice
to begin with, but gets even crazier when
properly applied. For starters, let’s look into
a combo that is just game ending. When Garruk’s
final is popped off, with Warstorm Surge in
play, you will be able to deal damage equal to
all of those Wurm tokens to target creature or
player. That even in standard is a very lethal
amount of damage. Now let us take it a step
further. In Vintage, if you were to produce
Saproling tokens, something common even in
standard, and use Life and Limb, then all the
Saprolings also become forests, meaning even
more wurms, and thus even more damage. An easy
way to achieve crazy amounts of Saprolings,
especially with Garruk’s ability to spit out
tokens, is Mycoloth.
These combos are just some of the ways that
Garruk, Primal Hunter is vicious. Even staying
with a standard green deck, Rampant Growths are
back, which can accelerate the mana, granting
you some nasty drops. And the fact that you are
creating an army of beasts to block for Garruk,
and have access to Fog, to keep Garruk on the
board to activate his final shouldn’t be as hard
as getting him there. But I guess that’s why
Autumn’s Veil was reprinted as well. One more
mana to ensure your green spells cannot be
countered, I think that’s a deal.
Drawing cards, defending you from creatures, and
eventually doing something that just ends the
game. Sound like any Worldwake card that became
controversial? Fortunately, the way he's
designed, I doubt he will ever be as dominant or
as annoying as Jace. He will, however, be the
face of a new generation of powerful green decks
with greater diversity and resilience than any
we've seen recently. He will, much like Chandra,
be a one-man combo with almost anything that
involves creatures, and lots of things that
involve lands (Oracle of Mul Daya says hi). He's
certain to be a hit - start preparing to face
him now.
