Six mana for a 5/5 flyer is pretty sweet for
Red, but only fitting for a Dragon. What really
makes this interesting is that it's basically a
repeatable Demolish, plus a power boost every
time you use it. Once this guy hits the table,
all you really want to do is blow up your
opponents artifacts one by one and them smack
him upside the head as hard as possible.
The downside here is similar to that of Oxxida
Scrapmelter we talked about Monday. No, there's
no danger of destroying your own artifacts, but
Hoard-Smelter and Scrapmelter both lose a lot of
their luster when your opponent has no artifacts
to destroy. Without Hoard-Smelter's smelting,
it's worse than Shivan Dragon, who has long been
established as "below average by Dragon
standards". It's amazing in Limited, where the
odds of an opponent having no artifacts is
miniscule, but outside that, this may be a
sideboard card.
In an era of titans and Baneslayers, dragons
have to adapt or die, in both a flavor sense and
a game sense. In Scars of Mirrodin, they are
putting their aptitude for destruction to good
use. Hoard-Smelter Dragon has developed an
interesting riff on the classic spell Detonate,
making your opponent's fancy expensive artifacts
work for you. He has potential for 60-card decks
as a metalcraft breaker, and is pretty
ridiculous in limited formats, considering how
many decks are dependent on the mana Myr.
Today's card of the day is Hoard-Smelter Dragon
which is a six mana 5/5 Flying which a four mana
destroy target artifact effect that also
increases its power until end of turn.
This is a very impressive effect if your
opponent has a higher cost artifact available
which may place this as a bit of a sidedeck
option for another dragon if your deck is
running one. There may not be many
opportunities to play this with the cost, but as
an alternative to Shivan with it out of Standard
rotation this works fairly well, but other
options do exist.
In Limited this is a card that will win the game
unless there is an immediate answer or multiple
options for stalling it available. The
destruction and increased power effect are both
even more valuable in the format while a 5/5
Flying body make it a top choice already.
This is a card you change your deck to include
and it should always be picked first in any pack
in Booster regardless of previous color choices.
Strider Harness and Golem Artisan are good
choices to draft once this is in your pool as
they offer Haste or Trample if the opponent
happens to have an extra Flying available on
defense.
