The awesome flavor text is basically all this
card has going for it. It's a weak, defensive
combat trick that only delays your imminent
face-bashing. Sure, it could allow your blockers
to survive, but if they don't kill the attackers
it's still just delaying the inevitable. And if
they do, well, congratulations-- your opponent
attacked into your creatures with creatures he
knew would probably die, and they did die. Sure,
your opponent didn't get to trade, but...
Here's the real issue. Giving creatures -X/-0 is
mechanically similar to preventing damage.
Remember Healing Salve? Mending Hands? Samite
Healer? Have those made any real impact on any
game you've ever played, besides to just make it
drag on longer? I didn't think so.
The color pie confuses me sometimes. Turn the
Tide plays an awful lot like Fog, but it's blue
rather than green. Cards like this usually play
best in limited, but this particular one's
impact is not as great as other similar cards.
It requires a little more planning to ensure you
actually survive the opponent's all-out attack
to launch your own. (Perhaps that's why it's
blue, as well.) It also works more in regular
combat than conventional Fog cards.
Today's card of the day is Turn the Tide which
is a two mana instant that gives all creatures
opponents control -2/-0 until end of the turn.
This isn't really a bad card, but is at best a
sidedeck option for Blue to use against against
token swarm builds and possible Infect. It
doesn't really work in maindecks and is very
narrow in design which keeps it from really
standing out.
For Limited this is slightly better as you know
both you and your opponent will be using
creatures whenever possible and the odds of
Infect being a factor are fairly high.
Even then a one turn -2/-0 is not a priority
pick in Booster and should be pulled after more
direct removal and stronger creatures. In
Sealed this can be played as filler, to support
your mana curve, or as improvised removal
depending on your pool.
In Multiplayer this may seem to have more of an
impact for controlling how battles turn out, but
the applications are likely to be somewhat rare
and unlikely to be a major factor in most
formats. A notable exception is Two-Headed
Giant where something like this works quite well
due to the turn rules.
Welcome to the Card of the Day
here at Pojo.com. Let’s take a look at Turn the
Tide from Mirrodin Besieged. This one generic
one blue instant gives creatures your opponents
control -2/-0. I have long been a fan of these
style cards, from Ovinize to Disorient, blue has
been able to exploit making creatures weak for
some time, and now it just gets better.
In standard the easiest application to Turn the Tide is
simply run red and blue together, pop the turn
the tide and attack with Hero of Oxid Ridge. The
depletion to your opponents creatures powers is
sure to enable a few more creatures to get
through and hit home with Battle Cry. Of course,
it also doesn’t hurt if you are facing off
against infect creatures, and really don’t want
to take a lot of damage.
In vintage formats, this card can be downright fatal. I built a
deck focusing around Ovinize and cards that
dealt with reducing power to zero, and than ran
the Merfolk Thaumaturgist. The switch in power
and toughness can cause even the scariest
creature to become “illegal” and be sent to the
graveyard. With the abilities that allow copied
creatures and untap creatures, using Turn the
Tide could potentially wipe an opponents side of
the board.
All in all a fun card with multiple uses that should see a
lot of play, and all for different reasons.
