The idea of a wall between science fiction and
fantasy is largely a recent idea, and very
largely artificial. In "Tower of the Elephant",
one of the first Conan short stories, the
greatest sword and sorcery hero of all time
meets an alien from the distant green planet of
Yag. H.P. Lovecraft's "Dream Quest of Unknown
Kadath" largely concerns the inability of mortal
minds to comprehend the secret gods of deep
space. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels are his
answer to the question of what swashbuckling
fantasy would look like in space, and even C.S.
Lewis wrote a criminally underrated Space
Trilogy. In short, I welcome Origins' new
MechWarrior overlords.
Hangarback Walker is a card that definitely
wants to be built around, which makes it
fortunate that it's not really the sort of card
that can be easily defeated with a single card.
It's fairly vulnerable as large creatures go,
but the swarm of evasive thopters you get when
it dies means that you may not actually care
(and sometimes you'll even be happy - Nantuko
Husk, anyone?). And the sorts of deck choices
you need to make for it to work well, such as
lots of mana acceleration and other artifacts,
lend themselves to credible plans B through Z. I
expect this to be a popular card in casual
formats everywhere.
Today's card of the day is Hangarback Walker
which is an XX 0/0 artifact that enters play
with X +1/+1 counters, taps for one to add
another counter, and when it dies each counter
gives a 1/1 Flying token. Even with just
two mana this is really quite playable and very
efficient as doubling to a 2/2 on the next turn
still leaves two mana available to maintain
tempo. Entering play at four mana as a 2/2
or higher is of course an option later which
gives this increased value in any stage of the
game. Mana acceleration, counter
production, and many other effects can support
this and it slides nicely into a large number of
existing builds. Overall this is an
excellent card with no noteworthy weakness and
should see play across most formats for the
foreseeable future.
In Limited this is an easy first Booster pick
for both in and out of game value as a
reasonably priced colorless creature that can
easily become a large number of evasive tokens.
Every deck can and should play this when
available and there is no reason for any Sealed
deck to not include a copy when in the pool.
I like it. it harkens back to some of the old
hydras, with the bonus of being colorless. Most
times, you're not going to cast it for more than
6 due to the double X cost, but i'm sure with
ramp and whatnot, the sky's the limit. It's got
a mana sink ability, and even an anti kill spell
mode for good measure. It won't set standard on
fire, but it's great flavor, and great R&D
work.
