One of the many cards in Avacyn Restored
that evokes memories of the Castlevania series,
Slayer's Stronghold encourages you to backtrack
in true Belmont tradition and revisit old places
and creatures with new equipment. Ever looked at
a creature and said "Gee, this would have been a
lot better if it was more like Bull Cerodon?"
Well, now any creature you cast can become a
Bull Cerodon. Seriously, though, it's an
uncounterable aggressive boost for the most
aggressive color combination, and an even more
universal one than equipment. It's worth
committing to those colors just for that.
Today's card of the day is Slayer's Stronghold
which is a land that can tap for one or for a
Red, White, and tap gives target creature +2/+0,
Vigilance, and Haste until the end of the turn.
Red/White has a few solid cards currently for
the build and more should be coming in the next
block. While Haste is only useful on the
initial turn a creature enters the battlefield
the reusable +2/+0 and Vigilance make this quite
efficient and powerful when combined with the
right creatures. Looking forward or even
back to Extended this is a solid addition to a
specific color combination and will likely see
some play.
For Limited the odds of running both colors is
somewhat small and splashing one or the other to
activate a land's effect may not be very
efficient. However, lands are usually
difficult to remove and Haste or Vigilance can
make a huge impact in the right situation.
The main issue is having enough of the support
or splashed color available in a turn the
creature to be given Haste is played.
Aside from that concern this is usually worth
running in Sealed if Red/White is viable, but a
bit cumbersome to draft into for Booster.
Welcome to
the Pojo.com card of the day section here at
Pojo.com. Today we are looking at Slayer’s
Stronghold from Avacyn Restored. Slayer’s
Stronghold is a rare land. Slayer’s Stronghold
taps to add generic mana to your mana pool. You
can also pay one white and one red mana and tap
the Slayer’s Stronghold to give target creature
+2/+0, Vigilance, and Haste until the end of the
turn.
Not too bad of a land I suppose. Certainly
not my favorite to have seen. But we should more
so look at what it really is, a preview land for
the coming Return to Ravnica, as this is
obviously Boros themed. Perhaps this card will
be more of an impact once we are back in Ravnica.
For right now though, it can be a boost to any
deck running the two colors, as long as the mana
is available and not needed elsewhere. The main
problem is the main benefit would be from giving
something you just cast haste, which means you
lose three lands in the process to do so (the
red and white mana and of course the Stronghold
itself).
