A decent attacker, but of course we're here for
the ability-- to untap Gates. Since Gates come
into play tapped, having one of these out
negates their drawback. And since Gates are dual
lands, Greenside Watcher can "tap" for any color
of mana that you build your deck to produce. It
also works with our last two cards, Gateway
Shade and Crackling Perimeter, letting you
double-dip and deal an extra 1 damage with the
Perimeter or give the Shade an extra +1/+1.
Which is great in a Limited situation, but this
is Green we're talking about. It has better ways
to produce mana, it has better ways to give
creatures +1/+1, and it has better creatures to
give it to. If you think you've found a
situation where Greenside Watcher improves your
deck, you've built a bad deck.
Greenside Watcher
This guy is a rather interesting card - I'm
always intrigued by creatures who are intended
to be in the "mana elf" archetype but do so by
untapping lands rather than actually generating
mana themselves. This particular example is a
rather niche card, needing a specific type as he
does, but it's also worth noting that he doesn't
care why the land was tapped in the first place
- meaning that you can get an extra activation
each turn out of cards like yesterday's Card of
the Day. That's not a huge niche, but it's an
interesting one nonetheless. In limited play,
Greenside Watcher isn't reliable acceleration in
the early turns, but you don't feel as bad about
it because he has two power for two mana. A card
that's useful on both turn two and turn ten is
almost the Holy Grail in some formats.
Today's card of the day is Greenside Watched
which is a two mana 2/1 Green elf that can tap
to untap target Gate. While a method to
increase multicolor mana production in a
partially Green deck this isn't likely to be a
big factor in competitive formats. Gates are
not the best dual land option available and
support for them is too situational to be
reliable. A two mana 2/1 elf with possible
mana acceleration would be highly playable, but
not working on any land or producing mana
directly will keep Greenside Watcher from most
decks.
In Limited this is much better, both for being a
2/1 for two, and the potential acceleration of a
needed color. An automatic inclusion in
Sealed using Green, even with few or no gates,
and a decent third or fourth pick in Booster.
The value clearly increases with multiple Gates
in your pool and it can trigger several of the
Evolving creatures in Simic.
Welcome to
Pojo.com's card of the day section! Today, we
are looking at Greenside Watcher from Gatecrash.
Greenside Watcher is a common green creature elf
druid. Greenside Watcher costs one generic and
one green for a 2/1. Greenside Watcher has the
ability tap: untap target Gate.
While not the most amazing card in the set, it is
effectively an Arbor Elf, only better. I say
better because of the fact that you are able to
use the ability on Gates, which produce
different colored mana, and if you are using
Gates, it likely means that you are running at
least two colors.
Like I said, might not be the most explosive card in the
game, but definitely a very useful card.
