As is tradition, the green one is the biggest of
the cycle, weighing in at 6/8, stats that make
it well-suited for both pulverizing creatures
and surviving whatever combat it finds itself
in. Its "combat ability" is reach, instead of
trample as you might have guessed. While the
first three got vigilance, haste, and
intimidate, this is a defensive ability.
Swinging with a 6/8 is still doable of course,
but you end up feeling like you missed out.
Still, traditionally in cycles like these the
green one doesn't always even get an extra
ability, instead just being bigger than the
others.
The "for each opponent" ability more than makes
up for it. Outright destroy one permanent per
opponent. Kill planeswalkers, if anyone's got
one. Destroy troublesome enchantments like
Martial Law or Curse of Exhaustion. Take out
Equipment or mana rocks. At the very least
they'll have some nifty dual lands to take out--
this is Ravnica after all.
And for every permanent you remove, you get a
Forest. At seven mana it's unlikely you still
need more lands, but green has never had any
trouble finding uses for all that mana, and the
deck thinning is always welcome too. Perhaps you
have cards that can animate your lands?
I presume that the Primordials represent the old
gods mentioned in Cinder Elemental's flavor
text, or are their servants or harbingers -
perhaps the Nyarlathotep to Ravnica's equivalent
of Azathoth. That does raise the question of
what could be bigger or more disruptive than
today's card of the day, but one of the two
things we learned from Rise of the Eldrazi was
that there's always a bigger creature. (The
second thing was that I'm not the only person in
the Magic sphere who's read "At the Mountains of
Madness.")
Sylvan Primordial perhaps attracted the most
attention of any of its brethren because of the
breadth of its removal ability. Green's been
getting a lot more destructive power recently,
including the fight keyword to deal with
creatures, so this breadth is shocking not in
its existence but arguably in its scale. You can
easily imagine this card taking out problematic
permanents all around a multiplayer table and
putting its controller well on top (not to
mention into the role of public enemy number
one). I daresay it even looks reasonably
attractive to one-on-one decks that can reach
its mana cost; destroying planeswalkers is never
unnecessary, and getting a powerful creature on
top is great.
Today's card of the day is Sylvan Primordial
which is a seven mana Green
6/8 with Reach that destroys one target
noncreature permanent of each opponent's and
puts a Forest from your library into play tapped
for each permanent destroyed. With Green's
acceleration this isn't very difficult to get
into play and the destruction and filtering
effect provides a nice card advantage, mostly in
Multiplayer, and does offer a weapon against
Planeswalkers. Reach makes this more
defensive, as does the lack of evasion or
Trample, so it is unlikely to see much play in
one on one settings. In Multiplayer it
makes for a solid deck filter and effective
source of removal and will be a popular choice
in Green builds.
For Limited this is a three for one source of
card advantage that is a fair offensive threat,
strong defense, and effective topdeck with the
removal aspect. An automatic inclusion in
Sealed for Green guilds and worth a first pick
in Booster even if it isn't as strong of an
impact on the creature side of the battlefield
as other similar cards.
Did you expect the green Primordial to be
anything other than huge? It's not THAT
good, though. Don't get me wrong, I play
it in limited because it's fat with reach, but
the abilities are far from game changing.
I don't see casual players liking this all that
much, but like all primordials, the ability is
amplified in multiplayer, and might be a legit
threat there. I just don't see how this
sees constructed play, though.
