Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods
– Murders at Karlov Manor
Date Reviewed: March 1, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 4.0
Limited: 4.0
Multiplayer: 3.37
Commander [EDH]: 3.67
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Green definitely needs more effects like Hystrodon – it’s officially part of the color pie, and I personally prefer encouraging people to attack with their midrange creatures rather than having a bunch of enters-the-battlefield triggers on them. Of course, Yarus is really an enabler for face-down cards, which means that a lot of his fortune in casual Magic will depend on how people rate creatures with morph-style mechanics in red and green. I feel I’d be remiss not to note that he gives you a pathway to flip creatures like Krosan Colossus without paying their high mana costs. As for Standard and other tournament formats, his abilities are a pretty good reason to go into his colors when you have lots of face-down creatures, and I have a suspicion there are a couple of decks that would play him just for granting creatures haste.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
Face-down creature support is always an interesting angle in a deck, and Yarus does that pretty well, playing with both the cloak/manifest and disguise/morph angles. Haste is nice, Curiosity is also nice, and getting the thing back on death…is potentially very scary, especially if you have a way to get rid of the creature on-demand. Yarus is also a team-wide haste enabler, so that’s even more fun, though he himself takes his sweet time to get in there.
Yarus is a pretty good support creature for a deck that might have needed a bit more support to get off the ground, and he can spin an established board into a very scary situation. He’s a serviceable enough attacker in a pinch as well, but you probably would rather let him crank the power up of the rest of your board. This feels like a force multiplier, but a strong one.
Constructed: 3.5 (if face-down is good, I think this will be part of why)
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.75 (maybe not the best face-down support colors, but I think there’s a room to make this work)
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