Wayward Guide-Beast – Zendikar Rising MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

In most sets, Wayward Guide-Beast would have a drawback. But a drawback is only a drawback as long as you let it be one, and the obvious combination is with landfall. There are so many cards with that ability to choose from at this point that it almost feels pointless to list them; just pick the most aggressive ones (or the ones with relevant abilities) and you’ll probably have the core of a deck right there. In larger card pools, you can even add Seismic Assault or Trade Routes for maximum abilities containing the word “land”!

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

This feels an awful lot like a twist on Zendikar‘s Goblin Guide, an aggressively-costed cheap creature with a “downside”. Wayward Guide-Beast bounces one of your lands when it successfully lands…which might not necessarily be a downside if you’re running a tight curve (and you have some of the double-sided lands to work with). A 2/2 with haste and trample is still a good deal for one mana, and even if you’re forced to lose a bit of tempo, tempo really only matters until they’re dead, right? It’s a card where I could see it seeing Modern play (or none at all), because the upsides versus the downsides make for an interesting cost-benefit equation you need to balance out.

Constructed: 4 (take this with a grain of salt; it might have a home, but there’s a real chance the downside is larger than I’m expecting)
Casual: 2.75
Limited: 3.5 (great early, awful late)
Multiplayer: 2
Commander: 2.25