It's pretty obvious that in a deck full of
creatures with defender, this Wall could produce
some explosive mana. But if your deck is full of
Walls, what are you spending said mana on? Most
Walls are fairly cheap. And what happens
if you draw your big spells, but not your Walls?
Well, at least Overgrown Battlement will make a
fine blocker to hold off an opponent until you
get what you need. The real measure of Overgrown
Battlement's power lies in how good it is as
your only defender. And in that role, it's
pretty good. A 0/4 for two mana will hold off
most aggro decks fairly well. And a two mana
creature that taps for G can be quite useful.
Continuing "Nostalgic
Functional Similarity Week" here at Pojo, we're
talking about a card that once powered up huge
spells and defended a generation of green
control decks from cheap creatures - just
retooled to play well with extra copies and
other similar walls. You might also think of it
as the green Everflowing Chalice, although that
doesn't fit my imaginary theme as well as the
comparison with Vine Trellis. Either way, I
think we'll be having a lot of fun summoning
Plated Slagwurms and the like on the fourth
turn.
Magic The Gathering Card of the day: Overgrown
Battlement
Welcome back readers today’s card of the day is
an interesting Wall from Rise of the Eldrazi,
Overgrown Battlement is a 0/4 wall that can tap
to add a green mana to your mana pool for each
creature with defender you control. Wow let’s
gets this out of the way, when was the last time
Vine Trellis saw serious tournament action?
Tooth and Nail? Well well now I could see this
card seeing play in some sort of insane mana
ramp style deck possibly featuring the Eldrazi
in standard. In extended and eternal I
doubt this card will see much if any play, there
are more effective ways to ramp mana and Tooth
and Nail hasn’t been a powerful choice for a
while, this being said a slightly improved Vine
Trellis won’t see much competitive play. In
casual and multiplayer utilizing walls could be
fun I planned a deck with this Vine Trellis and
other assorted walls to ramp into Spawnsire of
Ulamog and bash with Eldrazi, there are a lot of
fun things you can utilize walls and mana in
casual as well as providing a wall to hold back
aggression. In limited unless you have a massive
amount of Eldrazi of creatures with defender I
can’t recommend this.
Today's card of the day is Overgrown Battlement
which is a two mana Defender that adds mana for
each creature with Defender you control.
Green has only had twenty-one cards with
Defender, including two Blue/Green cards and
none of the other cards are currently Standard
legal. The main benefits of this are the
defense being four which puts it out of
Lightning Bolt's range and the benefit of having
multiple copies in play. For the cost this
is a decent defender and acceleration, but the
lack of types hinders it somewhat and it will
likely do better in a multicolor deck with
additional Defenders.
For Limited this is a very nice card with some
support options in the set and at the common
level it should be possible to obtain multiple
copies. Not intended as a first pick in
Booster, but a good third or fourth choice to
help move into earlier Eldrazi. For Sealed
this can go into any deck running some Green
lands for both roles and other Defenders from a
second color will support the acceleration.
Going for every Defender available isn't
recommended though as it will limit offensive
options and doesn't apply direct pressure to an
opponent.
