Ajani’s Pridemate – MTG Throwback Thursday (2010)

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

There have almost always been decks that want to get some kind of creature on the table early and somehow turn it into a dominating beast. The Tempest era gave us the cards that eventually became Counter-Sliver, in which each creature is relatively unthreatening by itself but they add up to something almost impossible to stop. Ajani’s Pridemate is the most recent card in that style – while it lacks the unsolvability of Crystalline Sliver or the Swiss Army knife qualities of Tarmogoyf, it grows rapidly in any deck that includes even minor interactions and has no theoretical cap on the stats it can have. Besides which, it fits in theme decks which get an awful lot of support, and remain very popular among casual players.

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5

Technically a “bear” while being a cat, Ajani’s Pridemate is payoff for all of those lifegain strategies you might want to try out. And it also is payoff if you have lifelink effects. A fairly flexible 2/2 that scales well late is a nice threat, even if it does take time to actually scale up. There’s not a ton to say about Ajani’s Pridemate: it can get out of control if you have even incidental lifegain, but it still has an acceptable baseline as a 2/2, which is not the worst place to be.

Constructed: 3
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3.75
Multiplayer: 2.5
Commander: 3