Captain Howler, Sea Scourge – Aetherdrift
Date Reviewed: March 17, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.63
Casual: 4.50
Limited: 4.38
Multiplayer: 4.00
Commander [EDH]: 4.37
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Captain Howler’s discard and combat abilities are aggressive – extremely aggressive, in fact, to the point that even a single activation can be entirely game-changing. I’m impressed that he looks for any kind of discard effect, which includes everything from the type that blue and red like through getting hit by Duress, all the way to paying for Westgate Regent‘s ward cost. It almost feels like they thought the ability wouldn’t be strong enough otherwise, which is difficult for me to understand just from reading it. He suggests a specific theme deck and drives it all by himself, to the point that it’d be easy to overload on ways of finding and defending him and neglecting the rest of what your deck does, so be cautious when you make your deck.
His abilities are obviously the main thing you build around, but I also didn’t quite realize at first just how efficient and aggressive his cost and stats are, especially with ward added. For reference, he has the same combat ratios as a card like Gnarled Professor, which might raise eyebrows and/or questions about what the charts look like nowadays; but it does mean you have a built-in plan B no matter what happens with your discard theme!
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Since some of us have been talking about Tarkir’s new, broader use of architecture, clothing, and mythology from the real-world regions it uses as inspiration, I want to draw your attention to Captain Howler’s Polynesian-inspired tattoos. I feel like they should probably keep doing things like that. It was how Robert E. Howard did his worldbuilding, so it’s probably more than good enough for Magic.
Curiosity on legs, as it were. Captain Howler, Sea Scourge is both a delightful Shark Pirate and an interesting sort of enabling presence, turning cycling into a massive boon and even rewarding other discard outlets. Captain Howler’s body is deceptively bulky as a result of a ward ability that hits on multiple axes, and it can hit very hard if you trigger a lot of card discards. Conveniently, red and blue is most given to looting, and there’s a lot of fun you can have here. I do think that there might not be quite the support you need to make this shark pirate shine in Constructed, but it might be worth trying…an unblocked attack can turn dangerous very quickly, and this is the kind of threatening presence that can push opponents into the danger zone quickly.
Constructed: 3.75
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.25 (might need to draft around him(
Multiplayer: 4 (keep in mind that you can manipulate the tides of war with this ability; it says any creature, not just yours)
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
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