This card has two major flaws. One, it costs
five mana and is a 2/4. Two, it benefits a
rarely used tribe. Aside from that, it's a very
powerful card. It lets all your Archers deal
their damage twice, and gives them +1/+1 to let
them deal even more damage. And it doesn't even
specify Archer creatures or combat damage, so a
"Tribal Instant - Archer" that dealt damage to a
creature would also get the benefit. No such
card exists, nor is there any way to make a
noncreature permanent an Archer without making
it a creature, but it amuses me.
Constructed- 3
Casual- 4
Limited- 2.5
David Fanany
Player since
1995
Greatbow Doyen
Despite being a popular prestige class in
Dungeons and Dragons and getting a few
high-quality representatives in recent sets like
Femeref Archers and Lys Alana Bowmaster, Archers
are not a very common tribe these days. Your
best bet might be to look through your boxes of
older cards for extra copies of D'Avenant
Archers and Elvish Archers, either of which
become downright lethal when combined with
Greatbow Doyen. You can also use Changelings,
but that sort of feels like cheating.
Strangely, I feel like this should be legendary
with the name it has. And if it were legendary,
we might actually have a playable card at a
cheaper cost. Getting a 2/4 creature for five
mana is just not cool in any way. The other
downside is that there are a ton of great
archers to play. Anyone remember those 2/1 first
striking Elvish Archers that used to be in the
core set? Those guys were playable. Doyen is
overcosted and doesn't have the right tribal
group.
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 3
Limited: 3
Swordmaster13
Monday's card
is Greatbow Dowen. The "Archer Lord", Greatbow
Dowen gives other Archers you control +1/+1 and
allows archers to deal the damage they deal to
creatures to the Controller of those creatures.
Archers in Magic are typically creatures that
either have Reach like Thornweald Archer or deal
damage to flying creatures like Jagged-Scar
Archers. Against non-flying creatures, the
abilities of most Archers lose some of their
usefulness but the Dowen's second ability makes
them useful even against non-flying creatures.
With all the good creatures that fly in the
format and even those beforehand, Archers has a
good chance at a decent tribal deck with this as
the game-winning card.
First of all, this card sounds like a Champions
of Kamigawa card. I’m still trying to forget
Champions of Kamigawa, so this is a strike
against this Elf Archer card right off the bat.
Seriously, though, Greatbow doesn’t have a
really bright future in the game of Magic
outside of the most casual decks. Greatbow Doyen
cost FIVE, which is a lot. Greatbow Doyen helps
archers, there are exactly FIVE archers in
Lorwyn and Morningtide COMBINED. This is a maybe
card for sealed deck, a probably-not card for
booster draft, and an unlikely addition to
Standard or even Lorwyn block constructed.
There’s just not much here to like.
CONSTRUCTED: 1.5
CASUAL: 2.0
LIMITED: 2.0
v0rac10u5
Greatbow Doyen
Greatbow Doyen is an interesting card. He takes
away your opponent’s ability to block.
Unfortunately, there are very few playable
archers (Thornweald Archer and Chameleon
Colossus). In limited, this card is outstanding
if you can get the changelings, otherwise, it is
well below average.
ˇ
Constructed: 1
ˇ
Casual: 3
ˇ
Limited: 3
Psychoanime
Greatbow
Doyen
5 mana for a 2/4 is just too inefficient.
There's also next to zero good Archers in pretty
much any format that this is legal in and so
there's really no use for this card.
Constructed: 1/5
Casual: 1/5
Limited: 1/5
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