Rampaging Baloths – MTG Throwback Thursday (2009)

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

It’s not just Omnath who makes landfall decks get out of hand very fast. Most decks don’t even cast their Rampaging Baloths unless they have at least one land in hand to trigger them, and some decks have the right support to get three triggers in a turn (or even more!). Gathering the herd in this way is obviously most relevant in matchups that care about combat – anyone who wants to attack is going to have a bad time – but you can also build your own hard-to-stop combo involving cards like Purphoros or Garruk’s Packleader.

And if I may digress, I think this is a much healthier way of getting out of hand than . . . whatever the heck Omnath was doing in the five minutes before he got banned. If you’re going to break a match open by doing standard turn actions, it’s way more fun to flood the table with a herd of large green creatures, and it’s way more fun to lose by getting beaten over the head by a herd of large green creatures. That’s why Rampaging Baloths is a cornerstone of the Jumpstart Cube I’ve been working on. If that’s something you might be interested in, you can check out some of the in-progress deck halves on my Instagram page!

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

Back when green’s creatures were merely “good” instead of “omg what is this even”, Rampaging Baloths was one of the more entertaining options to try and get one’s smash on. Its strength shines if you can immediately get it to producing more beasts than you know what to do with, and its own body is pretty strong as an attacker. It’s a nice endgame option in Limited formats that aren’t as brutal as Zendikar Limited, and it’s pretty nice in Commander when you have the tools to trigger landfall a stupid number of times. But it’s a touch “fair” for Modern and other wide formats, needing time to really get rolling and only being a 6/6 with no protection besides its rather ample backside.

Constructed: 2
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4 (far better in Iconic Masters Limited)
Multiplayer: 3
Commander: 4.25