This is one of the hardest to remove creatures
I've seen, at least until it gets to the point
where your opponent doesn't mind if you remove
it any more. At two mana, it comes down early
enough that you're opponent isn't going to have
a strong enough attacker to kill it, and they're
not going to want to waste a combat trick
pumping a creature just to kill this thing. They
can't target it directly, but you can, so you
could block and play your own combat trick (with
mana from the Caryatid itself!) By the time they
have a 3+ power attacker online, you've
hopefully ramped into something bigger. The only
real way to disrupt this is with something like
Anger of the Gods, but that's a waste of a
powerful card dealing with a 0/3 speed bump.
The real reason this card is as powerful as it
is, is that it ISN'T very powerful. The Caryatid
itself isn't the threat, but it enables the
threats early and efficiently, and is much
harder to deal with than its threat level
justifies, therefore it tends to stick to the
table pretty reliably.
The days of fragile mana creatures are over. At
least until next year. I'm a little surprised
the designers didn't think they had to be more
careful with giving mana creatures hexproof -
the promise of things like things like Llanowar
Elves has always been that you can use them as
creatures and also as mana, but the risk has
always been that they can be destroyed in combat
or by spells. Remove that risk, and you
basically have a Mox. Granted, in the case of
Sylvan Caryatid it's a Mox that costs two mana,
as though it's 2004 and Vintage is minorly
popular and Sphere of Resistance is all over the
place, but it's basically even safer than
Rampant Growth or some such. Oh, and it can
block, too. There's a reason why green control
decks have been more popular than ever since
Theros came out.
Today's card of the day is Sylvan Caryatid
which is a two mana Green 0/3 with Defender,
Hexproof, and taps for one of any mana color.
This is a very solid form of acceleration for
Green that can also block, trigger Evolve, and
stays in play to add Devotion or to effects that
count creatures. This will see quite a bit
of play across formats, particularly multicolor
Commander builds, and there is no major drawback
aside from not being available for offense in a
pinch or to support an alpha strike.
In Limited this is a solid first pick in Booster
that is useful both for acceleration and early
game defense, but also to fix multicolor builds
and ease splashing or other color effects.
In Sealed this is a fantastic pull as multiple
colors are almost a requirement and Green is
generally strong as a framework to work around.
