@BuffJitte : A wizard you turn into a donkey, obviously!
Imperialstonedragon
★★☆☆☆ (2.0/5.0)(1 vote)
cybernetic magic or what
DoctorKenneth
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(2 votes)
@Forgeling:
Does he need to have abilities to be a wizard? Maybe the fact that he's a 1/3 and not a 1/1 is a reflection of his magical ability. Spells to increase his defensive combat power and whatnot.
Or are you asking why a guy that's just looking lazily out over the water is gifted with magic? Well, they borrowed him from Mirrodin, where pretty much all the Neurok (the race of blue-aligned humans, like this guy) are tripped out on mind-expanding serum, leading a lot of them to pursue smarty-pants careers like wizard, alchemist, and engineer. In fact, just by virtue of being a Neurok, he probably knows a few spells.
This was, of course, before Wizards decided that references to past sets were bad and confusing, and fixed up our core sets proper. And, of course, before the core sets were fixed by removing all those offensive non-magical animals and references to reality. And all those confusing creatures with plural names. It was also before they said "to Hell with it", and printed M11 with references to Natuko, regular old boars (Brindle Boars), and cards with plural names (Tireless Missionaries).
Sironos
★★★☆☆ (3.8/5.0)(2 votes)
Vanilla, why design vanilla cards? It must be for when they run out of ideas close to a deadline, and hey, vanillas are okay in draft. But why make a vanilla, who is a wizard? Isn't the whole point of wizards that they at least know one spell or magical ability? Very strange. Having 3 toughness does NOT qualify as wizardry in my book.
blindthrall
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(1 vote)
Oh, he knows how to cast spells. They just all happen to be completely useless.
Salient
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This is one of those creatures people find paging through a box of your cards and ask, "why bother to keep this?" At which point you can answer by covering up everything but the art and flavor text (sadly the 9th edition has better flavor text, but not the nicer-looking black border).
This is the kind of simple yet interesting creature you populate a 'learning deck' for a brand new player with. Lots of flavor (in the artwork and in thinking about why a Wizard would have high toughness), but no mechanics to learn. Sure, an experienced Magic player has zero use for this card, but "simple creatures and spells with cool artwork and/or awesome flavor text" is how I got my partner and a few of my friends into Magic (they were intimidated by the complexity of finely tuned decks -- too much to learn all at once).
I'm glad Wizards prints vanilla cards like this with unusual characteristics. My partner actually asked about the "Wizard" denotation -- asking if Lumengrid Warden's high toughness indicates that he protects himself with spells, and wondering if it was possible to target the dude with Cancel to reduce its toughness. We decided he does indeed use some sort of magic to protect himself, just not the kind of magic we'd describe as a "spell" for game purposes. It's exactly this kind of interaction that justifies the printing of cards like this -- things that are obvious to us (you can target the spell Lumengrid Warden with Cancel when it is cast and on the stack, but cannot target the creature to change its attributes) are bewildering to new players.
JoeyWalker
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This is not a bad creature for a pure and plain control mono.blue deck. It as 3 thoughness, so is nearly as though as a wall, and he also has 1 power, so he can eleminate early threats and not die, because he has 3 thoughness. and that's really the point of a low cost creature in blue. Yes it's simple, but good.
Polycotton
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I agree with salient that cards like this are great for beginners and getting people into the game and not confusing them with loads of abilities and rules. The old Horned Turtle is quite popular due to such introductory nostalgia.
Earthdawn
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This guy would be just fine in Limited. Blocks all of the early aggresors your opponent will toss at you.
tankthebest
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Interesting that there are no links to any other cards in the comments.
Comments (14)
Does he need to have abilities to be a wizard? Maybe the fact that he's a 1/3 and not a 1/1 is a reflection of his magical ability. Spells to increase his defensive combat power and whatnot.
Or are you asking why a guy that's just looking lazily out over the water is gifted with magic? Well, they borrowed him from Mirrodin, where pretty much all the Neurok (the race of blue-aligned humans, like this guy) are tripped out on mind-expanding serum, leading a lot of them to pursue smarty-pants careers like wizard, alchemist, and engineer. In fact, just by virtue of being a Neurok, he probably knows a few spells.
This was, of course, before Wizards decided that references to past sets were bad and confusing, and fixed up our core sets proper. And, of course, before the core sets were fixed by removing all those offensive non-magical animals and references to reality. And all those confusing creatures with plural names. It was also before they said "to Hell with it", and printed M11 with references to Natuko, regular old boars (Brindle Boars), and cards with plural names (Tireless Missionaries).
This is the kind of simple yet interesting creature you populate a 'learning deck' for a brand new player with. Lots of flavor (in the artwork and in thinking about why a Wizard would have high toughness), but no mechanics to learn. Sure, an experienced Magic player has zero use for this card, but "simple creatures and spells with cool artwork and/or awesome flavor text" is how I got my partner and a few of my friends into Magic (they were intimidated by the complexity of finely tuned decks -- too much to learn all at once).
I'm glad Wizards prints vanilla cards like this with unusual characteristics. My partner actually asked about the "Wizard" denotation -- asking if Lumengrid Warden's high toughness indicates that he protects himself with spells, and wondering if it was possible to target the dude with Cancel to reduce its toughness. We decided he does indeed use some sort of magic to protect himself, just not the kind of magic we'd describe as a "spell" for game purposes. It's exactly this kind of interaction that justifies the printing of cards like this -- things that are obvious to us (you can target the spell Lumengrid Warden with Cancel when it is cast and on the stack, but cannot target the creature to change its attributes) are bewildering to new players.