W: Windreaver gains Vigilance
until end of turn.
W: Windreaver gets +0/+1 until
end of turn.
U: Switch Windreaver's Power and Toughness
until end of turn.
U: Return Windreaver to it's
owners hand.
1/3
Windreaver
Dissension
Reviewed April 17, 2006
Constructed: 3.6
Casual: 4.1
Limited: 4.6
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst. 3 ... average.
5 is the highest rating
Windreaver -
The immediate comparisons between Windreaver and
Morphling has been made. Obviously, it is an
attempt to provide the ubiquitous blue-white
control deck with a win condition. A lot of
people are very excited. I am not one of them. I
think the best thing about Morphling was the
ability to make it untargetable. On Windreaver,
that is replaced with the ability to bounce it
back to your hand. When combined with the fact
that if you want it to deal any appreciable
amount of damage, it's going to (however
briefly) have a 1 toughness, that means it's
just going to be a target for small calibre
removal. It's as much of a successor to
Morphling as Razormane Masticore was to the
original. A cute attempt, but simply not
effective. It will, of course, be a huge limited
bomb. There's no card I can think of picking
over this if I was prepared to go into
blue-white in Dissension, and it would be a
strong pull in that direction for a sealed deck.
Oh yeah, it's the new Morphling! It has built in
flying, this time. And it may be a little more
tricky to maneuver. Make sure you think it
through before changing it's power/toughness
before/after pumping it. Anyhow, it's cool to
see that Wizards is adding a nice power flyer to
the new set. Dissension should put an end to all
the blah blahs about how the block is
unbalanced...of COURSE it's unbalanced, you
ninnies! It's missing almost 1/3 of the block.
Duh ;). And HI Jeff...I hope your car repair
goes well!
Constructed - 4.5
Casual - 5
Limited - 5
BMoor
Windreaver
As I'm sure my fellow reviwers will point out,
this card bears a lot of similarities to an old
W/U deck classic, Morphling. Rather than bore
you with a history lesson, I'll talk about how
this card stacks up on its own. For 3WU, you get
a 1/3 flier. That's a bit underwhelming. But if
you've got the mana, you can give it vigilance,
so it can attack and block. Then you can give it
+0/+X, and then switch it's power and toughness
for an X/1 flier on the attack, while still
reverting back to a 1/3 for blocking. And if you
really want to kill a blocker, you can switch it
to a 3/1 , then make it a 3/X, then make it a
X/3, etc. And then if all else fails, it can
jump back to your hand. This takes lots of mana
to do, however. When I first saw Windreaver, I
realized that this was a sort of "nerfed"
Morphling, giving older players the nostalgia
without unleashing something that powerful
again. Now I see that this is the anti-Morphling.
It's just as powerful as Morphling (well,
almost), but while Morphling encouraged a
reactive strategy, waiting to tap mana until the
last minute so you can always counter things,
Windreaver is a more agressive creature, making
you want to tap out on your turn to force
through as much damage as possible. In limited
it's easily the game winning card, and in
constructed it's solid enough to warrant
inclusion.
