If you can increase Daxos's toughness by any
amount, then he can't be blocked by anything big
enough to kill him... without combat tricks.
Sadly, he'll still run into 0/4 Walls and 1/1
deathtouchers, but it's still evasion. Better
yet, it's an evasive ability and an
"infiltrator" ability on one card, and it's a
real nice ability too! You get to steal a spell
from your opponent and cast it at them! The fact
that you have to cast it that turn or lose your
chance is a little restrictive, but the "mana of
any color" clause is nice if you've got
something like Everflowing Chalice on the board.
He'd make a pretty awesome commander, or even
just a tricky play in a W/U control deck to eke
out card advantage and surprise an opponent by
pulling out a trick they thought they'd get to
throw at you.
Welcome back readers todays card of the day is
Daxos of Meletis an interesting creature that
allows you to play your opponents deck and gain
a bit of life and dominate combat against larger
creatures. In standard this card does not quite
fit into existing archetypes and I don’t think
is powerful enough to justify its inclusion. In
modern and eternal formats once again this card
has potential but just doesn’t powerful enough
although it could see a limited amount of play.
In casual and multiplayer it affords you the
opportunity to play with your opponents cards
and gain a significant amount of life making it
quite a powerful choice. The downside is hitting
your opponents lands and since decks have a
relatively high percentage of land this card
often does nothing making me really doubt its
effectiveness in commander and multiplayer
without added support, which puts it behind
cards that are good on their own. In limited
it’s solid with a unique effect but can only be
run in certain types of decks. Overall a
potentially powerful card except when it isn't.
Today's card of the day is Daxos of Meletis
which is a three mana Blue and White 2/2
Legendary that can't be blocked by creatures
with three power or more and whenever it deals
combat damage to a player you exile the top card
of their library, gain life equal to the
converted mana cost, and until end of turn may
cast it with mana of any color. This is an
interesting card that almost always gives a
solid advantage when it deals damage, the only
exception being hitting land when the opponent
is not in need of one. Other than that one
scenario this will exile a potential benefit for
the opponent, possibly give you that threat to
cast, and some life gain as a bonus. In a
deck with countermagic or cards to improve the
evasion, grant Hexproof, or Double Attack this
can be very difficult for an opponent to manage.
Overall it is likely to see some play in
Standard and will definitely be popular in
Commander.
In Limited this is a strong card that only
requires a splash of a second color to be a
serious threat in many situations. While
there is some removal and many creatures can
block it, when it can get through the card
advantage and life gain make this extremely
efficient for just three mana. Aside from
the multicolor aspect there's no drawback to it
and should be played in any Sealed deck that has
a pool able to support Blue and White. In
Booster it is a slight gamble as a first pick,
but is well worth adding a second color when
already drafting White or Blue.
Daxos of Meletis looks really tough with that
sword but don’t worry he doesn’t have first
strike. That is all that is keeping Daxos from
becoming a Great creature. If this human had
First Strike, I could take the Legendary
drawback. I like it when WOTC makes creatures
that require players to think and be creative,
but I hate it when they slap Legendary on
creatures that are already limited. Let us look
at the abilities. Exiling the top card of the
library is good and gaining life equal to the
mana cost of the card is great. The ability to
CAST the exiled card until end of turn with any
mana is amazing! If the exiled card is a land,
then you can’t do anything. With all that being
said, these abilities are random and have a slim
chance popping off. A competitive player will
have to grind pretty hard to make this creature
work. Daxos of Meletis is a Limited & Casual
beat stick and unless a sweet combo is found
elsewhere, that is all he will be.
I really feel like Daxos here is inspired by
somebody from the Iliad, but I can't quite
decide who. I want to say it's clever Odysseus,
but I could believe there is be another
interpretation. If you look at his ability as
milling one card a time on attack and gaining
life about 65% of the time, it may not look that
good. Still, we've all seen creatures with
seemingly small effects that add up to huge
advantages over time - remember M12's colored
Mage cycle? Also, in this day and age, the
chance that your opponent will have something in
his deck that he really doesn't want you to cast
from under him is pretty high. Theros (and Magic
in general, recently) is largely about that
exact thing.
