Pointed Discussion

Eh.. I still prefer Tracker. Tracker says I want YOU, come 'ere! The other creature goes NOOO! Tracker nods approvingly and says "MMMMM HMMMM". With Arena you might want to kill their Birds of Paradise but you might end up getting axed by their Dark Confidant or Morphling or whatever.

What would happen if you put un-blockable damage through the land against a creature which had protection from its color?

Rmember the frist arena

@ Equinox523: The problem with that is that if one controls a green creature large enough to make Arenaing it worthwhile, then one will typically want to engage in combat anyway. Come to think of it, that's the problem with Arena in general. That said it can be very useful for punching through stalemates.

@ Knightless: Since the creature is dealing damage, rather than Arena itself (Arena is just the enabler), the damage would be prevented by a protection ability.

I use it with stuffy doll to good enough effect... And it works nicely for forcing foes to hit walls or such... I use it in my mono white control more than my mono blue control-- I enchant / exile their powerful creatures, use pariah stuffy doll or sun droplets to prevent direct burn, and arena to deal some damage or remove weaker effect creatures.

I use it in combination with Baron Sengir. particularly if the opponent has enough creatures to block him with a number of them that would kill the Baron but no single creature would have enough power on it's own, this card provides a great way to cull the battlefield and pump him up in in the meantime.

Note that this doesn't require the creature to be untapped, so you can activate it choosing a creature you attacked with already to get the best of both worlds (assuming that creature didn't take too much damage in combat.)

Its a duel land! (dodges thrown brick)

This would be fun in a bully deck. Throw a bunch of deathtouch & strike 1's in there. Oh dang! What if you have a bunch of infect that you give trample to somehow? Would the poison hit your opp due to trample with this card? Need a rules guru here. If so, there's a thought.

I wonder what plane this is at.

I was surprised to see this card being reprinted. This gives green a way to kill utility creatures who don't engage in combat. Also awesome with deathtouch, and also works against combat-related abilities like Exalted or Bushido (which will not trigger).

Edit: @stygimoloch - Creatures like Archivist or Dark Confidant can be hard for a green deck with not splash to deal with, since chances are they will not engage in combat. Arena gives green players a chance to single these guys out and kill them, all for colorless mana.

Noone mentioned Vigor? NOONE?!?

Arena becomes 3, T: one of your creatures gets at least one +1/+1 counter, assuming your opponent has creatures with 1 power or more. If your biggest creature has more power than their biggest creature's toughness, you also get to kill a creature for free (probably not that biggest one), and getting some +1/+1 counters for it. Did we mention this is creature removal playable in green?

I'm tempted to make a mono-green stompy deck based largely around this, but I'll need to include some nonbasic land fetch (why hello thar Primeval Titan) to feel safe with it.

@Stygimoloch: the thing is, your creature can already be tapped when you use arena and target it. The criteria for targetting is "target creature you control" and "target creature of an opponent's choice he or she controls". The tap is part of the effect, not the cost, so you can beat face with your green fatty, then pay 3 to arena it and give yourself card advantage. I've just put together a very, very 'typical' green deck (ie. mostly unexciting, nothing groundbreaking), and one of my favourite plays is to bash with a 9/9 Scute Mob, then Arena it at some point before the end of my opponent's turn (typically the only way they'll be able to kill it is with deathtouch). If you throw Vigor into the mix, then they can't kill your creature, and unless they choose a 0/X creature yours is going to increase in power. =)

I still have my copy of the book this card came from (also titled Arena). Actually a pretty fun book. Never actually owned this card though (or Sewers of Estark), as my copy was used and came without the thing to fill out and send in.

Quite obvious "cheap" combo but... use it with Phyrexian Obliterator

I got this from a book like ten years ago. You all had to wait for Time Spiral.

Grovel at my feet, peons.

much simpler than what everyone else is saying, but when battlefields start to get too big (on both sides) you have to worry about stack blocking and if you have the bigger creatures you often don't want to deal with that headache. this card is a great way to thin the opponent's battlefield one creature at a time when stuck in a stalemate and if it's green vs green with your opponent outnumbering you but you having bigger creatures it can give you just enough advantage to put through your biggest stompy guy. in a situation where no one is attacking it's definetly worth while.

but I was actually thinking of just throwing it in a phantom deck I was considering making...

and this would be fun in my black deck because no one ever wants to kill my creatures, this would force them too, of course it's not the best choice since stronghold assassin pretty much serves the same purpose in that deck...

This card is incredibly versatile. Off-color creature destruction, distracting an opponent's biggest creature, forcing the death of your own creature with a goes-to-the-graveyard effect... you can even use this to tap an opponent's creature and then immediately hit it with Nettling Imp.

I remember when you had to special order this card by sending in something you got off the back of one of the Magic: The Gathering novelizations. I barely missed the cutoff for the mail-in date when I found out, and man was I bummed. I was a fairly young player at the time, and I only had one real deck: a Sengir Vampire/Nettling Imp deck. The thought of having a land that I could use to feed more creatures to my Vampire was beyond comprehension.

I'm rather glad they reprinted this in Time Spiral, since I can finally make up for what I missed out on so many years ago. I still have the deck too, updated a bit of course.

Pity nobody decided to reprint Mana Crypt as well.

Ready? Fight!

For some reason that keyword is going to make me really want to play cards with that ability. It just sounds so awesome.

Yeah, this sounds so much cooler with the new wording.

meh if it wasn't of opponents choice it would be pretty good

Back in the 90's I used to use this card with my mono black deck and choose my Nightmare which was usually always much more powerful then what my opponet would choose. Ahh, the good old days...

HEAVEN OR HELL!

LET'S ROCK!

Back when this came out all you needed was a Drudge Skeletons and a Royal Assassin and it was party time. Man did I love me some Arena.

I love it when the new cards can be as creative, innovative and artistically exceptional as the old cards. This card is quite novel. Of course, some combos are repercussion, treacherous link, and the like. It also works well with a card like cho-manno, revolutionary. The idea with giant growth works well for creature control in colors that lack direct destroy cards.

The 'Fight' Mechanic before it was given a name. I sure hope Wizards continue to print Fight for Green and Red. It really adds another dimension to the game, especially since green removal is so rare.

Wow, very interesting to see that the 'Fight' mechanic from the Innistrad block *wasn't* actually new. Would not have expected that, since it seemed like a mechanic that wouldn't have been easily understood back then, what with all the weird lengthy card rulings and very long wordings and such. But still, I'm giving it 4/5 just because I learned something new today about Magic! :D

Ah. So it's a duel land.

Also I love how this card was errata'd to say "fight". Hopefully that mechanic will stick around.

Note: This land does not tap for mana, so dont count it with the rest of your land drops. Treat it more like a nonland spell that costs but eats your land drop.

You guys actually think this is good? Whaaat?

I'm generally not one to be overly negative when rating cards, but this one just feels like a stinker. Granted, since this card's release, "fight" has gone from an obscure, full text interaction (that generally involved tapping) to a retroactive keyword with tons of Standard (2013 era) support. So, yes, there's a power seep factor in play.

Even so, though, what pre-2010s deck would this actually have been good in? Even pre-2000s, there were generally better options for removal, tapping, etc. And most of them didn't take up a land slot (or, if they did, at least gave you mana).

Let's go over why this card sucks, in a vacuum or when built around.

Firstly, it's basically an artifact passing itself off as a land. Yes, yes, there are other lands that don't have mana abilities. Dark Depths is a thing, etc.

But this is no Dark Depths. This is a land whose ability can't be used without mana AND creatures (on both sides of the board). That's asking a bit much without providing any other utility.

And what do you get for fulfilling these requirements? One of the worst fight effects ever printed, hands down. Why is it so bad? Because it's the only one--besides the Magus it directly inspired--that lets your opponent pick the target! Even a fight effect that selects one or both targets at random would be better.

The whole value of the fight mechanic is that it can function like a kill effect in Red and/or Green. Think about how bad a card that said "destroy target creature an opponent controls of their choice" would be. That's the essence of Arena's failing in a nutshell.

Compare with Contested Cliffs. That card gets it right on nearly every level, earning a well deserved 4 Star rating. Arena is just a poor man's CC.

Serves as a silver bullet alongside Knight of the Reliquary.