Pointed Discussion

i never played this guy,,,i mean ever

I have one in a deck I'm working with at the moment, but he might get thrown out. It would have been a better card if the trample ability was included, but sadly it's just not that great. It's 6/4 stats help a little, but I don't see this costing 6 mana... Maybe 5... Maybe.

More like Crap Wurm, amirite?

He can be OK in drft or sealed, but he's still booooooring. I love that he still has the Alpha flavour text though. Not many of those still around.

My very first Magic card. I prefer the original artwork, though that's probably just nostalgia talking. Still included in my Wurm deck, even if he is overmatched by others.

6/4 for 6 is sub-par on the mana curve. I think they keep him around for nostalgia reasons only. I agree trample would make this card

Please please PLEASE just reprint Yavimaya Wurm already. Its at least playable.

Get in there, Craw Wurm!!!

One time I played Craw Wurm and my opponent scooped.

Craw Wurm is the Chuck Norris of Magic.

8th edition's art pwns this one's

I gave this card a high rating based purely on nostalgia. You cannot disrespect one of the cards that defined green for so many years before power creep happened. As nickkom said, Craw Wurm is the Chuck Norris of Magic.

I use it in a U/G deck that relies on making monsters like this fly. It's not a great deck, and it's definitely not the best card in there (that would be Lorescale Coati) but with mana acceleration and card draw, it can come out pretty quick.

No, progenitus is the Chuck Norris of magic.

The first card I loved back when I was 100% Timmy.

One of best flavor texts!

Classic card. Makes good use in my mono-green deck full of fatties.

Good old Crap Wurm :).

When I was first getting started, one of my friends had a very bare bones monoG fatty fatty boom boom deck.

Nothing but Civic Wayfinders and Rampant Growths into various wurms and baloths.

Since then, I've come to expect more from constructed decks, but nostalgia will always keep me from hating this guy.

Plus he's still a house in limited.
With wicked art and text.

from JacksJokeShop:

"Please please PLEASE just reprint Yavimaya Wurm already. Its at least playable."

Seems as though your plea has been answered. Yavimaya Wurm has been confirmed for Magic 2011.

The flavor text should read:
"The most terrifying thing about the Craw Wurm is its huge mana cost for lackluster body and lack of abilities."

There was a time when you would worry when your opponent would put this one out on the table.

As most people here, I give it 5* purely out of nostalgia, before the power creep. Now for you're getting a 19/19 with shroud, trample, double strike, lifelink, protection from everything, indestructible and "when this enters into play, your opponent loses the game" - I am barely exaggerating?

Craw Wurm: I used to be the king in this town. Seriously, people would flinch when I turned up. Now it's "Rampaging Baloths" this and "Yavimaya Wurm" that. Just give me a chance!

Classic but it sucks.

I wish they print a card or two that makes Craw Wurm and Scaled Wurm so fearsome that make up for the powercreep. Muraganda Petroglyphs is not enough. Just an idea:

Elder of the Ice Age
Legendary Creature - Druid
Flash, Split second
If you control a Forest, a Craw Wurm and a Scaled Wurm, Elder of the Ice Age can't be the target of spells and abilities an opponent controls.
Craw Wurms and Scaled Wurms you control gets +2/+2 and has First strike, Forestwalk, Haste, Reach, Trample, Vigilance, and gains "if this creature blocks, it gets +1/+1 for each forest you control until end of turn".
: Regenerate target wurm. It gains Shroud until end of turn.
2/2

@ non1337: I share your desire to make vanilla creatures like Craw Wurm better (not 'awesome', but surprisingly good). Also, I am going to assume that your card idea is a 'no-holds barred' suggestion made to illustrate your point. While the overload of keyword abilities is way too much in my opinion (I like the flavour of a wurm with forestwalk though), there is actually a precedent for cards that refer to other specific cards, such as a cycle that tutors mythic creatures. Those cards work well for casual because you might only get one copy of said mythic rare creature, but you can feel comfortable having just one in your deck because you can simply tutor it up with an uncommon.

On a side note, I kind of like the idea of a creature that can tutor up creatures with no abilties, instead of just producing identical tokens over and over. It would need to be rare to keep it out of limited (where vanilla creatures see actual play), but otherwise it could be a good way to encourage you to include some vanilla creatures in your deck, without wanting you to have a deck made up of ONLY vanilla creatures (which would be pretty bland). Flavourwise, I am thinking some sort of summoner (like Fauna Shaman) who can tap to tutor up a "creature with no abilities", but instead of putting it into your hand for a preset cost, you pay its mana cost and put it onto the battlefield. I want it to feel like the summoner is actually summoning the creature him/herself, not just preparing it for you. Limiting the effect to vanilla creatures is a great way to cap its power, and represents the summoner's limited capabilities relative to you, the planeswalker.

Example:

Beast Master <-cost of the card could go up or down depending on effectiveness
Creature - Human Shaman
Rare
: Search your library for a creature card with no abilities, pay its mana cost and put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.
2/2 <- could change depending on effectiveness, but shouldn't be higher than 2/2 for a human (you could alter the creature type though).

Notes: Repeated shuffling isn't fun. That is probably the biggest drawback a card like this has. Yes, they printed Fauna Shaman, but that requires you to discard a card, so it is probably limited in the amount of times it can be used. As for the summoning effect, the creatures I am concerned about are ones like Watchwolf and Isamaru, Hound of Konda. This is why I said "pay its mana cost" rather than "pay X, where X is equal to the creature's converted mana cost".
Also, the flavour is a bit off with being able to summon soldiers and vampires and whatnot, but could be open for reinterpretation. Something to think about.

Another way to get lots of vanilla creatures onto the board without excessive deck shuffling is a sorcery that reads "search your library for X creature cards with no abilities and exile them face down, then shuffle your library. You may play any of the cards from exile for their mana cost whenever you could play a sorcery."

see
Ancient Silverback

Completely unplayable compared to Yavimaya Wurm. In fact, trample is so valuable that I'd take Garruk's Companion over this.

Aw, what a cute wittle putty tat! 5/5 for nostalgia.

such a fail card this was never good even homelands had better cards then this.
scumbling1 Merchant Scroll is better than most cards in most sets and craw wurm is worse then most cards from most sets so I called craw wurm a fail not Merchant Scroll.
There was a time when you would worry when your opponent would put this one out on the table.
your kidding right? Some of alphas creators are still quiet good at fighting by today's standers like Nightmare and Shivan Dragon. When was this good? IT certainly wasn't good when it came out back in the day you could make decks that would probably win before your appoints first turn if you where going first. The power 9 and channel where all unrestricted and the alpha beta lands where all easy pickings so you could run a deck something like this.
4x Time Walk
4x Ancestral Recall
4x Channel
4x Black Lotus
4x Fireball
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Counterspell
4x Timetwister
4x Regrowth
lands and moxs
4x Mox Emerald
4x Mox Ruby
4x Mox Sapphire
4x Taiga
4x Tropical Island
4x Volcanic Island
fire ball+channel+black lotus is a old classic first turn win combo but you are probably not going to get all 3 of them in the first 7 cards your draw even if you have four of each, but with the help of the ancestral recalls and time walks you should be able to keep on drawing and taking extra turns until you get channel and fireball especially with the regrowth's and Timetwisters backing them up you probably wont even need the black lotus with all the moxs you will get and land you will be able to play before your hand full of power 9 runs out. Sure these kind of decks weren't affordable of vary long but by the time ice age came out two years after alpha there where much better creatures then Craw Wurm.

Early sets were hit-and-miss. Some cards missed by being too overpowered. Others, like this one...go in the opposite direction.

The most terrifying thing about the craw wurm is probably the horrible mana cost it requires as it speeds through the forests' mana pool.

Might be a classic, but seriously if you think about putting it in your deck your a moron. Look up Yavimaya wurm before even go 2 your deck box. Same power, toughness, and cost, except it has trample. Why would you take a card that's a classic over a card that's exactly the same with an extra ability and different name? Come on people! Little brain power won't kill you. Using this card in a game might though.

FAIL! Has anyone here heard of Yavimaya Wurm! Sure this card is a classic with good painting but Yavimaya Wurm is way better a card. Don't put this in a deck!

This card is awesome just for Storm Crow value. A card used to illustrate how bad it is to play uninteractive creatures, but a better example since so many players once had a crush on this card.

Example: Someone posts on an EDH forum how tired they are of their goodstuff deck getting rolled, complaining about casual etc. Dude steps in and says, "Don't play Craw Wurm, bro." Of course no one is playing Craw Wurm, but we all know what that means.

At least it makes my inner 10-year-old giggle with glee.

Looking at this card mathematically, it has a total of 10 points, distributed among it's power and toughness (6+4=10.).
If we redistribute those points so that they fit along of a curve of "average power level creatures", this could easily be said to be equivalent to a 5/5. Not what you'd expect in green for 4GG, especially considering the colour requirements, even at common. If I recall Wizards' design philosophies correctly, white & green are roughly tied for "best creature colours" with black at 3rd (No, really! Heck, why do you think black got the vanilla 2/2 for 1C that is Walking Corpse before red got some equivalent?), red is 4th best for creatures & blue is worst. Keep in mind, this is my understanding of Wizards' design philosophies. It is only my opinion that they are correct, and I don't believe they should be true.

Anyway, even at common, I think a green creature costed at 4GG could stand to be better. A 4/4 would likely be balanced at 4G, as Stampeding Rhino evidences, and it has trample! Heck, Spined Wurm is a 5/4 for 4G! Admittedly, it doesn't have trample. And Kindercatch is a 6/6 for 3GGG. So, I would think with two coloured mana symbols, this could stand to maybe have an extra point in power and/or toughness, not to mention the double colour requirement makes it harder to play in limited.

Admittedly, this isn't a 5/5. It'll kill a titan and many other things in combat most of the time, and live to tell the tale. It'll also die in a fight against Bonebreaker Giant. Whether a point of its toughness is in its power is a good or a bad thing, I'll leave up to you. That's often one of the reasons Wizards of the Coast prints "bad" cards.

Still, on the subject of limited (And rarity): Yes many higher rarity creatures are almost always strictly better than this, (Usually barring corner cases.) like Primeval Titan, but those are allowed to be because of their rarity, and how that affects limited formats. When was the last time you saw Primeval Titan when you drafted M11 or M12?
Heck, how many uncommons do you see when you draft? Not many, I would imagine.
Limited formats need lower rarity cards to be weaker, because if all the cards were bombs, the excitement of one of those actually showing up would quickly fade, and the formats would be significantly less fun, not to mention, having to pick from among the best cards makes it a bit more skill-testing.

A bit trivially, it's also a classic from Alpha. Frankly, taking into account its rarity, limited formats, and P/T ratio and mana cost (Not converted mana cost; Mana cost actually accounting for mana symbols.), I'd say it's balanced, if a slight bit under-par. With all that in mind, I think it proves, if anything that Alpha has been designed well from the beginning. Not that Yavimaya Wurm wasn't a fair replacement; It was, in my opinion, a fair replacement.

The flavor is also great. It tells you it's green, huge, scary, and would kill you no problem if it were real. I both wish to know and horribly dread what such a noise would be. Based on this, and many cards, I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the many cards that has drawn new players into Magic: the Gathering all too well.

Overall, and rating it, finally, I'd give it a 2.25 out of 5: It's balanced, and well-flavored, but not perfectly balanced. But I can't give it a 2 out of 5, so thus, I'll give it a 2 out of 5, since it's not as perfectly balanced as it could be. Good job, Wizards of the Coast. I seriously mean that.

That's strictly worse than Vastwood Gorger, which isn't very good itself. 2/5

Draft card, pure and simple.

I've loved wurms since I started playing magic. One creature type that has always had consistently awesome art and flavor, regardless of playability. Because wurm.

For six mana in monogreen you could have Terra Stomper.
'Nuff said?

I nostalgia'd. This big guy was in the first deck I ever made, and there still is a Timmy thrill to seeing a gigantic serpent slithering over to deal 6 damage to your opponent. There's lots of far superior wurms, starting with the strictly better Yavimaya Wurm, but you can't beat Craw Wurm for good memories.

@gman92

That card is a rare from Zendikar. This card is a common first printed in Alpha.

That's like saying "Instead of playing Coral Merfolk, you could play Time Walk."

Or even in the latest set: "Why play Raging Poltergeist when you could play Malignus?"

'Nuff said?

Y U no at least 5 toughness? Did you forget you're green?!

While this guy is underpowered by today's standards, he was appropriate back in the day when the game was new and creatures were weaker. That being said, they really shouldn't keep reprinting this guy (or equally weak cousins) when we all know better than to play them these days.

6/6 for 6 vanilla would not see constructed play.
I dont like limited cards! They stink bigtime, and only see play in limited because there was no other options.

Also keep in mind, weak cards have nothing to do with strong cards. Look at Urza / Mirrodin block for examples. They both had their limited trash, but that didn't stop the block from breaking in two.

"speeds through the forest".
"Speed..."

hmmm... what ability, available in Alpha, usually represented speed?

Ha--Oh? Vanilla? Oh,ok...

Even in Unlimited this card was overpriced and useless. In a way, Craw Wurms damaged Magic for almost a decade, since WotC constantly treated them like the baseline price for fatties even though they were worthless and nobody used them in high-level play. It took years before they finally understood that late-game creatures had to be better in order to compete with other cards (which could often trivially render them irrelevant.)

This a bad card and I wish it had never been printed. In a way, it's worse than most bad cards, because the fact that it was almost playable fooled R&D into thinking it was a good baseline to balance other cards against. Chimney Imp only caused problems for itself; this guy caused problems for the entire game.

@Aquillon: Clearly you have never played Limited where Craw Wurm is awesome.

@thewrathofshane: And yet you complain about power creep on every card that's even a little too powerful... really if we had it your way every card would be the same.

Not sure what is worse, that this was actually reprinted in a core set this decade, or that Wizards once printed a multicolored legendary creature for one more CMC with the exact same P/T and (lack of) abilities.

It's a sad day when this classic creature of stompingness from my childhood has been outclassed by not a fellow wurm, elemental, or some other horror of the forests, but by a fox. Thank you Theros for Vulpine Goliath.

Not that I'm complaining, Foxes are great and need support. Still, I have fond memories of seeing Craw Wurm as the first card I saw in a booster pack back ages ago.

Will some one rid me of this meddlesome wurm! I've been looking at it since Craw Giant outclassed it back in the day. With all of the creature power creep (most of it well overdue) why can't we just have a Scaled Wurm for the price of a Craw Wurm?

I'd also settle for Yavimaya Wurm or Vorstclaw, but at the very least keep giving us 6/5s (Alpha Tyrranax and Vulpine Goliath).

I love how the flavour text for this card is absolutely perfect.

The sound of the craw wurm is the most terrifying thing about it...as nothing else about it is even unsettling.

1.5/5

The most terrifying thing about the Craw Wurm is probably the horrible crushing sound as it burns though 6 mana in you mana pool for a lousy vanilla 6/4.

Awww, pure nostalgia. This was the first card that I looked at and thought, "Wow, that thing is HUGE!" I mean, we're talking about comparing it with Pearled Unicorn and Giant Spider. Used to play it with Regeneration :)

Wah wah wah, so many tears being shed...I will stock a blue/green deck with four of these & adorn them with regeneration and jump spells and probably lose most of the time but I won't care because AAHHHHHHHH It's CRAW WURM! Look at that face! Just look at it! I am so amused by it's existence. 5 out of 5. WOTC: Spawn them anew in M15 if you please.

"The most terrifying thing about the craw wurm is the horrible crashing sound" = green player tapping for 6 mana.

What devastation is this coming out? A Terra stomper? Primeval titan? Vigor? Garruk, caller? The ideas... They are coming from all directions at once!

Oh... Craw wurm. Huh.