Ygra, Eater of All – Bloomburrow
Date Reviewed: August 14, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.88
Casual: 4.75
Limited: 5.00
Multiplayer: 4.38
Commander [EDH]: 4.50
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Before you even get into the ins and outs of Ygra’s gameplay, its look and concept grab your attention and hold it like a lynx hanging on to a much larger animal’s neck. I’ll get more into this in my gameplay-free review, but the Calamity Beasts recall the cosmic monsters of Greek and Norse mythology. And Ygra is like a feline Fenrir, and it’s just as potentially scary in gameplay as that sounds. Its abilities match its concept shockingly well, and let it become an increasingly threatening monster just from things that progress the game normally. But I’m more intrigued by its potential as a combo machine. It’s a rare way to turn things into artifacts in black and green, and it gives cards an innate ability to sacrifice themselves even if they didn’t have one before. It also interacts interestingly with anything that requires you to sacrifice a Food but was designed thinking that would be a token. Using a Gilded Goose to sacrifice an Ashen Rider or Junji, the Midnight Sky may not have been what the designers had in mind, but it sounds fun!
Constructed: 4
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 4.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Pouncing its way into Bloomburrow as one of the Calamity Beasts, Ygra, Eater of All tries to live up to that name. Uniquely turning everything other creature into Food, the big kitty has quite the appetite. Sending any Food to the graveyard, creature or not, causes Ygra to get bigger, and it’s worth noting that this triggers on any send, not just on sacrifice. Soft protection in the form of ward also helps the kitty potentially dodge removal into an empty board of an opponent, and while it lacks keywords, it’s a 6/6 at base for 5 mana that gets bigger. Ygra also can pair rather cruelly with effects like Collector Ouphe to really tighten the screws and soft-lock creature abilities, which isn’t normally something green can do readily.
Ygra’s a fascinating creature because, while it’s just a big creature, it plays well with decks that already use Food to its full potential and can function serviceably as a stand-alone creature. For being a big kitty, it’s surprisingly subtle in some ways, and it can tromp all over a board if allowed the chance. There’s a lot of ways to abuse and use its passive ability, and I’m interested to see what Rude Things people figure out with it; it’s the kind of card that seems like it’s one good piece away from splitting a format in half.
Constructed: 3.75 (it resists removal, but it is a bit of a tall ask at five mana)
Casual: 5 (kitty)
Limited: 5 (it gets big quickly and is hard to out, which seems fitting)
Multiplayer: 4.25
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
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