Pointed Discussion

This card = huge epic fail

So this is a 3/3 seven-drop for which i only have to pay (S)(S)(S) each turn to make this creature what it normally should be by default? Awesome.

please tell me no one has EVER played this card ><

uh, it's not that bad, especially for an ice age card. you can pump it to ridiculously enormous sizes. It's an overcosted but larger shade.

although back in ice age you couldn't pump it that much >.< urgh ice age.

reminds me of the creepy giant guy with the "big strong hands" in the neverending story.
Which means the nightmares are gonna start again :/

doesnt get much worse then this -5/5

I remember when I first started playing, my brother and I thought that it would be great to have this guy... it was so easy to pump him, after all! And he got tougher, too - most red pumping creatures only had Firebreathing!

Of course, this was also back when Scaled Wurm seemed like one of the most bad-ass creatures in existence. I found one of these in one of my boxes recently and cringed at his CMC.

I think this guy should be errata'd as a Snow Creature... I mean, the thing looks like it's made of snow!

Not all that playable, but the art has stuck with me in memory over the years.

@mudbutt_on: If you could go back in time to Ice Age, then sure, this got played a time or two. You have a bunch of snow land (not just mountain or any one kind) and pumped it up for a finisher - nothing great, but you could've done a lot worse. Its viability is practically nil outside of block constructed, sure.

One of the absolute worst cards ever printed. Only redeeming feature is the art.

I kind of feel bad for this card. There was just no technology or experience at the time to make it good. The way creatures were priced back then was fairly linear with respect ot power/toughness, whereas today things ramp up in power considerably after 4 CMC to make creatures comparable to spells in power.

So if you're a developer in these times of CMC = ~max(P, T). This set will also introduce the largest creature ever, an 11/11 with CMC 11 (with a considerable drawback). You're working on a card with the theme "snow lands make it stronger -- tap one to give it +1/+1". Which means, effectively, that it's CMC is X, and once it attacks its P/T could be P+X+1/T+X+1. Now, find a fair X.

You can't. If you start of with a Hill Giant at 3/3 for CMC 4, you're basically dedicating to have an 8/8 swinging around turn 5. Sooner with moxen, Dark Rituals, and lotuses, though those will of course make it weaker. The fair thing to do is reduce the gap by reducing the printed P/T, like they did with Mountain Titan... which puts it at about 1/1, and as soon as you tap out any Zuran Spellcaster can kill it. Lame.

So now you've figure out linear pricing + drawbacks don't work well. Maybe you could reduce the CMC by making it double-, or even triple-red? (If it only fits in mono-red decks, why not just give it {R}: +1/+1?) Or gold? (We have plenty of gold cards. Make this work as a mediocre-range red card.) So there goes all previous experience to draw on. Not that it's a lot. This is only the 6th expansion, the first large expansion. What do you do?

Well, from a practical standpoint a 10/10 and a 12/12 aren't very different from one another.... Boom, CMC 7. Maybe someone will figure out how to cast it. After all, moxen, rituals, lotuses, etc. Yeah, this guy has a shot. And "sucks for defense" is a drawback after all, even if it's not spelled out. It's like a big Ironclaw Orcs. That effectively sucks mana. Right?

(Nevermind that the first Sligh deck won't even be invented until after this set and the two sets after this is released. Yes, this card predates both the notions mana curve and of "drawbacks don't matter" aggro by two sets. As I said, this guy never had a shot.)

This card was awesome before the power-level erratta. It could tap already tapped things and still get the bonus. I feel like for 7 mana, the creature being infinitely huge with no evasion and only if you have a snow land is almost balanced at that point. What's the deal WOTC? Didn't you stop using power level erratta. Let Karppy her have his day in the sun!

Obviously terrible, though at the time, nobody had any clue how to price something like this, a mid-sized creature that could become huge. Still, I think 5R would have made a lot more sense when compared to Shivan Dragon, which already existed... sure, it would still be terrible, but not as obviously terrible.

My Karplusan Giant is sad.

Just run snow mountains and suddenly you have a humongous shade in red. It's not a bad way to spend your mana every turn in the red deck, and there are very few places left in the world where running snow lands over normal basic lands would be a downside.

Flameblast Dragon beats this, but I wouldn't rate it lower than 2.

Unlike most shades or firebreathers this won't hurt you with a manabarbs out.

That makes this interesting, although still thoroughly unbroken.

looks like the giant rock guy from '' the never ending story ''

Some wonderfully evocative, fairy-tale art here tho! The kind we just don't get anymore in Magic, for good and ill.