I keep looking at this and comparing it to River
Boa. Remember, defeating an opponent means
dealing 20 damage, but only 10 poison counters.
As such, you have to look at infect and almost
think of it as you would double strike. But of
course it only works like that if it hits the
player. If it's blocked, it acts like wither
instead. That's where the regeneration comes
in-- Blight Mamba can tangle with a creature,
leave a -1/-1 counter on it, and regenerate.
Even if your deck doesn't care about poisoning
the enemy, it makes a very convincing blocker,
especially in the color best known for creature
pump.
Coming so soon after River Boa returned for the
Zendikar block, the comparisons were perhaps
inevitable. Or perhaps I just like River Boa way
too much. Both cards' prospects for constructed
are usually partly determined by what other
decks are around. For example, at the height of
River Boa's popularity, the only decks that
could get rid of it were Sligh (with Incinerate)
and later Rebels (if they had Mageta the Lion).
Blight Mamba's regeneration, its strongest
feature, gets weaker if there are a lot of
decks around that make use of the creatures
we've reviewed this week. If that doesn't end up
happening, I could see it having a great run in
Standard - no-one wants to be blocked by it,
no-one wants to block it, and even fewer people
want to not block it.
Today's card of the day is Blight Mamba which
is a two mana 1/1 with Infect and a two mana
Regenerate option allowing it to take full
advantage of Infect as a blocker if mana is
available. For a Green deck that shouldn't
be a big problem, but in a Green/Black Infect
build there may not be enough acceleration to
spare for Blight Mamba's regeneration cost.
Depending on your design this snake can stall
quite well with just some lands, myrs, or elves
kept in reserve. Offensively it can swing
like any Infect creature to put the pressure on
with poison counters and the cost is right at
just two mana.
In Limited a two mana 1/1 with Infect is pretty
much the standard curve, but adding in the
option for Regenerate makes this a much higher
pick than many other similar creatures.
Being able to stall out your opponent and weaken
their creatures for a low cost is a big
advantage and they may not have many options to
remove this common from your battlefield.
Having more than one can really make things
difficult for any player, so drafting several in
Booster or opening a few in Sealed makes for a
good day. Easily worth including every
copy in a Green deck in Sealed and aggressively
drafted in Booster after bombs or solid removal.
For Multiplayer just having the mana untapped
should be enough of a deterrent to encourage an
opponent to look for easier prey and unlike
walls with Defender or other true stalls it can
still be used offensively at any stage which
allows flexibility.
