I have some fond memories of this thing wielding
a Loxodon Warhammer and effectively doubling in
size with every swing. People think of white as
being the life gain color, but green's no slouch
at it either. Obviously, giving Ageless Entity
lifelink is the easiest way to abuse it, but
having it on the field along with any other
lifelinker, or really any life gain outlet, is a
surprisingly solid play, especially in slower
formats. People underestimate life gain, but
this is one of a few cards that makes it good.
When I assess any card, I prefer to think about
what it can do, rather than what it can't do.
Ageless Entity can do a few different things; in
the context of the Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas duel
deck, it seems to be intended as a mid-range
card that grows as a threat naturally. But its
original intention was to be a lot more
spectacular than that - Heartbeat of Spring plus
Stream of Life is just the most obvious one, and
I'm not sure we want to thank Wizards for making
Martyr of Sands even scarier than she was
before. I've never got around to putting
Invincible Hymn in a deck, but I think I might
have to try it now that I've picked up an
Ageless Entity in the duel deck. A perennial
casual hit, and for good reason.
Today's card of the day is Ageless Entity which
is a five mana Green 4/4 that gains a +1/+1
counter for each life point you gain. The
cost is a bit high, though not really an issue
with acceleration, but relying on life gain to
power up a creature without Trample or evasion
is unlikely to win many games. While this
may not be legal in formats that don't allow
Darksteel even if it was the reliance on
multiple other factors to really be a threat is
too much to consider it for most builds.
Life gain by itself is generally inefficient and
no matter how big Ageless Entity gets it can be
blocked by a 0/1 and have minimal impact.
It can be powered up with Lifelink, Trample, and
even Hexproof to make it a serious threat, which
can also be said about many other potential
targets. Overall Green has no shortage of
more aggressive and self-contained creatures to
go through the effort of designing a deck around
this card.
In Limited a five mana 4/4 is quite playable and
if any of the cards in the pool happen to
increase your life it has a bit more potential.
As a first pick there might be better choices,
so it depends on the pack in Booster, but in
that or Sealed a fairly large creature with a
reasonable cost is not a bad choice.
