Pointed Discussion

This card was actually what made me stop playing Magic for many years. When this card was printed, it came as a sort of confirmation to me that Wizards was making cards that they knew were overpowered, and only balancing this by making them rare. While it sounds workable in theory, in reality it just meant that in order to be good at the game, you needed to spend a lot of money.

My beef with the card aside, it is an excellent creature, and if you're making a green beatdown deck, I would highly recommend it. It's a good card to have in your hand at any point in the game, which is a boast not many other creatures can make.

This Card Makes Me Wanna Play Magic Not Stop. Kavu Are The Bomb. GO WIZARDS

Wow, it's strictly better than Grizzly Bears!

That aside, this card is really good. It's an efficient 2/2 in the early-game, and it's an efficient 5/5 trampler in the mid-game. Not many creatures can boast that flexibility.

@Falyxron: LOL. If you really stopped during Invasion as you say you did, it's a good thing you didn't stick around to see Spiritmonger in Apocalypse.
You were right though, and now things have gotten even more ridiculous. The key is to have enough people to play with who are interested in casual play and not just building $500 tournament decks that they got off the net. The other key is to make good use of what you have. I don't use any mythics in my decks and barely any rares, and I can still match my friend's Jund deck packed with Garruk and Lotus Cobras and what have you.

This was when they realized that creatures were too often underpowered compared to non-creature spells. I think this was a change for the better that they were willing to up the power of creatures.

Kavu Titan, King of Bears!

Easily, one of the greatest grizzly bears every printed.

Mark Rosewater once told a story about how, during playtesting, he was given a deck that used Grizzly Bears as a proxy for this. However, he didn't know that at first. When he found out, he began holding it back so that he could play it with kicker, and ended up winning fewer games. The lesson? Grizzly Bears is better than this, due to being worse than this... or something.

@Fanaticmogg

The lesson isn't that grizzly bears is better than this, it's that you shouldn't hold out for the 5/5 trampler when you need the 2/2. When you have two mana and this in hand, cast it, when you have five mana, cast it kicked.

The point of a kicker like this is that Kavu Titan won't be a dead draw on turn 4 or later.

Atali's correct. He wasn't saying Grizzly Bears was better than this card. He was making a point about how giving the player too many choices and decisions can, design-wise, be quite bad. And on a gameplay scale, how you need to cast things as you need them, not hold on to them until they can't help you anymore. =p

As everyone else has said, this is just a great card. It's one of the few kicker cards that is aggressively-costed on both ends (2 for a 2/2 is good, 5 for a 5/5 trample is great).

Mark Rosewater tends to greatly underappreciate the intelligence of Magic players. He'd rather have a simpler card printed in Grizzly Bears than a more complicated one in case the player makes the mistake of playing it wrong and feeling bad about it.

I don't think you should coddle players. The people who appreciate the greater complexitiy are the players who will become more greatly invested in the game.

For those wondering, Maro's story about the card is here:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr188

@Fanaticmogg, Atali, Magnor_Crio, scumbling1
The point of the story is that the grizzly bears are easier to play correctly, and that this card taught him to play aggressive decks more effectively.

Decisions are skill testing, but after a certain point they are just annoying. If you have to make a million decisions in a game, how many of them actually mattered? Imagine that you have the choice each turn to skip your draw phase. This choice adds no skill to the game. The decision to play Kavu Titan on the second turn or to hold it does add skill, and the correct play changes with your deck, the format and the metagame without being annoying.

A mighty b it ch slap, I must say.

Both versions of this guy are really good.
there's not a whole lot to say about him. He's just really excellent. a grizzly bear now, or a 5/5 trampler for later.

Good with the few green cards that return a creature to your hand as a cost: drop it early, bounce it, drop it kicked later.

2/2 for is good. 5/5 trampler for is good. Versatility is REALLY good.

Grizzly Bear is a bad card, I would never cast this for 2 unless my hand demanded it.

While I appreciate your efforts, you don't really belong next to Necropotence....