Nessian Boar – Theros Beyond Death MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

This creature references the story of Atalanta and the Calydonian Boar. If you’ve played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you may have had a chance to meet the Calydonian Boar, and hopefully it hasn’t killed you as many times as it has me. The first time I tried the encounter was early in the game, and I didn’t realize that the recommended level it shows is always your current level – I got absolutely destroyed, which was funny to me but probably not to Kassandra.

The Nessian Boar has an interesting downside, which can actually be turned around in a lot of circumstances. If you have a herd of other creatures, they’ll all be getting through and it may well be irrelevant that your opponent drew a whole lot of cards. If you give the Boar indestructible, you’ll be doing that every single turn. If you want to form a temporary alliance in multiplayer, you can send the Boar someone’s way and invite them on the hunt. Even in a worst-case scenario, the Boar can easily trade with four creatures in a single turn, and as a green deck, you’re statistically likely to have something just as efficient to play in its wake.

Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5

Nessian Boar is basically a big, stupid board breaker. Each time it attacks, your opponent’s entire board is obligated to throw themselves under its ample hooves if able to. And as a 10/6 for 5 mana, it’s going to do a lot of damage to a board, even if that board kills it on its way out, and trample or deathtouch means frightening things for them.

The downside is real, though: for each blocking creature, its controller draws a card before damage is dealt, which might mean they draw a lovely kill spell with which to dispose of the unruly swine…or, even if they don’t, they’ll still get lots and lots of cards out of it. While you could leave the Boar back as a blocker for the most part, it doesn’t make sense to spend 5 mana on a fairly killable wall; the key is to go in with the Boar when the rest of your board is good enough to win the game on its own.

Nessian Boar is okay, but it’s not going to make it in Constructed. There are uses for it, but giving your opponents lots and lots of cards rarely is the way to maximize your odds of winning.

Constructed: 2
Casual: 3
Limited: 3.25 (it’s not a bomb, but a 10/6 for 5 mana is still a big deal and can chew up the weaker Limited boards rather readily)
Multiplayer: 2
Commander: 2.25

Phat
Pack
Magic
YouTube

Hello everyone and welcome back to Pojo’s Card of the Day!

Today we’re looking at this chonky hog that appears to be the feast of the hunt in your upcoming limited environments!

So Nessian Boar is basically a big chonky boy that has a Lure Enchantment strapped on to it, and with stats that make it worth it. The only drawback, and it’s a pretty big freakin’ drawback, is that whenever he is blocked by a creature, that creature’s controller draws a card.

So what does that mean?

Swing with Boar, everything blocks it. Trigger. Trigger. Trigger. Trigger.

Before damage. Kill spell.

So where does this very vulnerable Porkchop fit in the grand scheme of formats?

In Limited we’ve already seen one of the vulnerabilities of this creature, and that is allowing your opponent to draw cards can be incredibly volatile. The only place I can see this is as a ‘lure-bomb’ where you’re not looking to clear off a table but instead get your alpha strike of damage in. However that seems to be a scenario that is so few and far between it’s hard to invest a pick on this creature unless it’s super late in the pack and you know you’re going to be dying for a decent 19 – 23rd.

In Standard or Pioneer? This is a joke because the decks are a lot more streamlined and chances that they’re going to have a removal spell in hand, or after drawing 2-3 cards is going to be an almost always, meaning that your boar is going to be feeding cards to your opponent, and he’ll be serving you up a healthy portion of ‘Feelbad’

But what about Commander, you might ask, and in commander, his fatal flaw is that you’re dealing with 3 other players with their own suite of removal spells and alliances to roast the boar after drawing x amount of cards is going to be constant.

I couldn’t even figure out a way to put this in cube to make it decent, unless the cube was like, a ‘bad card’ cube where it’s all about terrible cards I guess.

Ultimately this card suffers from an excruciatingly bad layer of text that takes any positive stats on this creature and prevents it from doing what it wants to do, which is clear a path.

Constructed 1/5 – This isn’t a guaranteed boardwipe but it is guaranteed to make you feel bad.

Limited 1/5 – Drawing cards is amazing in Limited, but not so great when it’s your opponent drawing the cards!

Commander 1/5 – Maybe, just maybe, this could go in a Pheldagrif Commander Group Hug deck?

Cube 1/5 – You’d get better mileage just playing Lure instead.

Phat Pack Magic is a channel dedicated to Magic: the Gathering and creating awesome coverage of local events for formats like Cube, rare pack drafts, and now FNM Pioneer videos! Check it out at https://YouTube.com/PhatPackMagic