Bristly Bill, Spine Sower – Outlaws of Thunder Junction
Date Reviewed: December 31, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander: 4.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale: 1 is bad; 3 is average; 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
This card was #2 on my Top 10 list.
Bristly Bill, Spine Sower has certainly shown its stripes as a deceptively dangerous card across a lot of formats, thanks to landfall providing continual value and its ability to make all of your creatures grow explosively with little warning. Counter doubling from sonething that spreads them so readily is threatening, and it’s especially perilous when the cards bring the counters themselves. In particular, Bristly Bill shone brightest alongside a far more egregious card that will be showing up later…but as far as growing threats go, this might have the most terrifying heights that it can get to.
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.5 (can embiggen all sorts of threats)
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
This card was not on my Top 10 list.
The threat that can come down early and grow into a game-ending monster has a long pedigree in Magic, all the way back to Quirion Dryad in Miracle Gro decks from a long-lost Extended format. But you rarely get one that can turn other creatures into such a monster at the same time or as an alternative, and Bristly Bill breaks the mould of that archetype wide open. He’s surprisingly dangerous when used just in that role, and the fact that he uses the highly abusable landfall ability makes him applicable in countless decks beyond just the obvious ones. Not to mention that taking advantage of landfall means that you’re likely to have enough mana to use his activated ability much sooner than you might guess. There are plenty of decks where you lose to them and wonder “what just happened?”, but few of them are creature-centric – and I’d wager a surprisingly high number of those that are involve Bristly Bill.
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander: 4
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