Pointed Discussion

Anyone could tell me what exactly is in that picture. I mean is that supposed to be an angel?

It's a manly looking female angel with leopard-print wings with spikes on them. Yeah, the artwork's a mess. Great card, though. Stymies the pain from little tokens and provides an evasive, efficient beater. I like it.

Art's a train wreck. Doesn't Wizards have the ability to toss out crummy art? Or is their budget really that tight?

In this economy I imagine that wizards budget pobably is that tight, either that or they did the art at the last minute before it was printed. Thankfully the card is useful, token decks are going to be near useless and decks with larger creatures are going to lose some fraction of power.

Aww, so it is a female angel. I thought that for the first time, that a male angel was arted. What's Wizards have against male angels anyhow? All of the real life well known angels are male, like Gabe, Mike, and Lucifer.

that is one crazy pic i like it though it adds difference to the angels
i like this cards abilties to for tyhe same reasons as 2pcsofcandy
sick!!!

I sort of like the art. At first I thought it was a male angel, which Magic needs more of. Is Gabriel Angelfire the only one? Gameplay-wise it's a medium-sized flying body for four mana, with a useful - sometimes really good - ability to boot. Oh, and it doesn't die to Lightning Bolt.

I love it for it's usefulness in stopping token armies, but I hate it for the artwork. This balances out to me being sort of neutral.

Why has nobody mentioned it yet? This + Godhead of Awe in a control deck rules. Of course Elspeth, Knight-Errant is a must. If you can make her last ability go off all you need is some sweeper effects and everything is good to go.

*Wagner's 'Flight of the Valkyries' play in my head*
dO_ob
well, she LOOKS like one...sorta...in a weird, buff Norse way

You have absorb 1
why haven't any of these new keywords been used? they're good.

Starlit Angel + altered Urza's Armor = Guardian Seraph?
Looking at other cards like Baneslayer Angel, Wizards apparently enjoyed in Magic 2010 to give white creatures an even better cost / efficiency rate that it already used to have.

Question about this card:

Since I understand that to damage a Planeswalker with a spell, it's technically funneled through the Player, does this prevent one damage to your Planeswalkers via spells as well?

Ex. Lightning Bolt on Jace with this out would only do 2 dmg to him versus the usual 3?

I assume so since I don't see why not but I figured I'd ask.

and 3/4 flyer for 4 was already good in itself..

"White power! White power!"
---wotc

Guardian Seraph is awesome in her specific niche. She stops hoards of small creatures from hurting you. She stops pingers such as Blood Cultist, and Prodigal Pyromancer from hurting you. She completely shuts down draw burn from Underworld Dreams and Kederekt Parasite, as well as stopping Grapeshot dead in its tracks.

Basically, she stops you from taking a lot of damage in the long run. Furthermore, she's got a nice, big body and can fly. She also fits nicely into a 4 drop slot; not conflicting with 5cmc Angels.

The only thing that I dislike about Guardian Seraph is the art.

I love the card but I cant make out the artwork very well.

Seems like a lot of people would rather whinge about what it's a picture OF rather than the picture itself.

Strong card is strong

its kind of funny that they had Paul Bonner, who is the mastermind doing the most beautiful Grisix artwork doing an angel

Ok, I picked up a couple of these and I have to say that they are ridiculously good. Its a 4 drop with flying and a decent attack that doesn't die to lightning bold. Also they key is that it takes 1 away from every source that would deal damage to you. So small creatures become so much less impressive. Bloodbraid elf is almost laughable when its attacking as 4 manna for 1 or 2 haste. The only thing this has trouble against is naya decks, but if you'r dropping their attack and still able to attack 4 some decent flying damage it still greatly influences the game.

What if 4 of these are on your side of the field... wait... if you mean a source, tdoes it mean for each card that'll do damage?

if u had 4 of this on the field, jund decks would be completely useless. though u still have to prepare some counters for pulse...

This card is very good for its casting cost I'm surprised it's not valued more. I hate the artwork too. I think the artist missed the mark on this one, both thematically and technically. From a distance, it looks like the angel is half beetle, even though it's just the armor and the angel's legs are curled. The wings look like leopard skin and its shape is weird. I don't know if there is foreshortening of the legs, but something feels off about the drawing of the legs. I don't think the Wizards art director should have approved this art.

@MightyMortox: Since a player must successfully damage the opponent before opting to redirect that damage to the Planeswalker, then Guardian Seraph will reduce damage by 1 first, and then the remaining amount can be redirected to the Planeswalker.

Hey, I like the art work, not all angels have to be a stark white, angel dusted celestial being from the havens... Consider her the melee scrapper of the angel family, fending off armies of 1/1's...

Good cmc for her abilities and stats, and yeah, shes all up in my angel deck

I owe this card a personal thanks, for inspiring new decks for me, and for finally helping me make a deck to love for me in standard.

Hmmmm...

Guardian Seraph...

Angels are awesome... period. Her ability is solid, and it often buys time for the controller.
She is comparable to Emeria Angel because she nullifies tokens, whereas Emeria creates them. Having one more toughness allows her to survive longer than Emeria, though Emeria creates more power.

Heh heh. Why not have both?

Artwork is sub-standard for a rare angel. Artwork would be expected on an uncommon card. Leopard-spotted wings are an interesting concept, but Bonner did not execute it cleanly. The color palette he chose is not sharp enough and he did not provide enough distinction between separate shapes, especially in the case of the wings, which blend into the background. Also, the vast space to the left in stark contrast to the cluttered right side. Once again the wings create a problem here. Nearly half the volume of the wings fall past the frame and create an overall imbalanced and uncomfortable sight for the eyes.

However, Paul Bonner is better than mediocre. Perhaps this type of flavor is not his specialty.
And I still have bias toward angels. Love the creature type too much. : )

An amazing card, a 3/4 flier for 4 CMC that saves you a lot of life in the long run. Only thing I dislike about this card is the art, ew.

well... the art is good... but erm portrays a manly lady. Which is bad.

I'm all for male angels and angels with non-dove wings, but this guy is kind of creepy looking, and he's not framed well. Half the picture is essentially blank.

But I love the ability. 3/4 and flying is respectable for 4 mana, and the ability is great, especially against decks that use little creatures. And if the opponent doesn't use small creatures, make them. I use Hunted Phantasm and Dovescape with this guy. Godhead of Awe also works.

I believe I have a solution to the art problem for everyone, ahem.
Take your Storm Crow and place it behind the card so the wings show, then get a sharpie and finish the job :D. This card is absolutely nuts It can block Storm Crow it trades with 4 Storm Crows (which we all know why the only four copies in a deck rule was made for Storm Crow!) and can take out 1.5 Storm Crows when they fight. (although being 2x the cost you think it could take at least two out...) but what makes this card nucking futs is only a single copy can stop the entire Storm Crow army and race! (without buffs) without doing anything, I may not run white in my primary deck but this is an auto include for it just to stop the Storm Crow decks! (it would be SB but 50% of decks are Storm Crow decks, so its MB) Freaking broken card 10/5!

P.S. I rated this card a 4.5/5 it deserved its rating it has for reasons others said. And I made my comment for a laugh I hope it pleased you.

People, people people, this isn't a DUDE! Look at the flavor text! If it is a guy, then I DONT GET THE FLAVOR TEXT! Please explain it to me!

This has got to be the worst looking angel in MTG

@Irandrura: In the Abrahamic religions angels have no gender. They are genderless, and most of the time does not even take on a human-like form.They mostly take on forms wich are more correctly described as "Eldritch Abominations" than "Winged Humanoids".

I like to see an angel that isn't wearing some variant of sexy armor. I hate sexy armor on angels.

Same artist as The Fate of the Flammable. And Dragon Appeasement. Based on this kind of track record, I'm pretty disappointed in Paul Bonner.

Rainyday2012:

There are a few other male angels. Gabriel Angelfire, which you mentioned. Malach of the Dawn. Angelic Page could be either gender. I'm not sure what Glimmering Angel is supposed to be. At first glance I thought Angel of Retribution was male, but on closer inspection I think my first impression was wrong.

However, there are 67 creatures in M:tG with the angel subtype. There are two unambiguously male ones. Malach of the Dawn is a timeshifted card, and is expected to be weird. Gabriel Angelfire is from Legends, where flavour was a bit different to the way it is now. I think it's pretty clear that WotC has made the aesthetic decision that 'angels are normally female'. There are maybe two more of ambiguous geender, and over sixty female angels.

Personally I would like to see a few male angels. As noted there is mythological precedent. Most of the famous angels of Christian mythology are male: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, etc., etc.. I see no reason to avoid male angels, and variety is always nice. One of the good things about M:tG is the wide range of art, and I see absolutely no reason to close off a particular area.

Anyway, to the card itself, Guardian Seraph is a pretty solid play in a White deck. I like it, but then again, I have an irrational bias in favour of solid angel cards.

Tiggurix:

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, angels do take on humanoid forms; see e.g. Tobit 5:4, where the archangel Raphael is mistaken for a young man. You do have some far more alien-looking angels - you may be thinking of the merkabah - but you certainly have humanoid ones. Furthermore, consider it in terms of art and cultural depictions. If you look at traditional Jewish and Christian artistic depictions of angels, you will find them depicted with gender, regardless of any quibbles we might make about whether angels are essentially genderless or not.

That is: irrespective of the true essence of angels, in traditional Judeo-Christian art, they are frequently depicted as male. In M:tG, a conscious aesthetic decision was made to portray angels as exclusively female. Here - http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr294a - Rosewater seems to imply that they deliberately make the choice, as they think it makes M:tG more aesthetically unique. I am skeptical of that myself, but...

Anyway, angels can be depicted as male or female. Traditional art shows us male angels, M:tG has shown us female ones, and they're both great. In conclusion: I think it would be great to have some variety in M:tG. We should certainly not get rid of all our female angels, but it couldn't hurt the game any to include a male angel every now and then, just for variety. After all, there are only so many ways you can draw 'holy winged swordswoman'.

great angel for 4 cmc

@Tiggurix Ah, a fellow troper! I too wish to see some proper, freaky, wheels-within-wheels-covered-in-eyes-and-that-kind-of-crazy-stuff angels. I hope we get some within a few blocks.

Honestly, the protection she gives is just so inferior to Hedron-Field Purists. The purists costs less (sort of, i.e, if you only have three lands), protects your creatures, and can be upgraded to prevent 2. I'd give it a 3.5.

This card is actually another poster child of creature creep and rarity power creep.

But it's also a relatively fair card with decent art and nice flavour. I'm a sucker for angels so I'd be happy to use it, I'm just not that happy about the creep it represents.

I really wish they'd re-release this with different art so I could play it in a deck.

I always wonder, where are his legs...?

My friends wanted to try out his new 1 drop deck, where every creature was 1/1. Then I played this and he got so ***ed off.

neutralizes guttersnipes ability if you have 2 out. That alone is awesome. The only problem i Have with combining this with godhead of awe is that it also becomes a 1/1 which makes it vulnerable. I can see this possible making it in my b/w control deck and even my deathbringer deck. At first i Thought it said it stopped 1 damage from 1 source, but then it became clear to me what it actually said and I got excited. Love the card. Art sucks though.

Absolutely hilarious with Godhead of Awe

Take that Grapeshot!