Pointed Discussion

Oh come on, it's not that bad! Yeah, it's not great either, but definitely better than the current 0.5/5

Heavy Buttock.
the list of better equipment? ENDLESS.

Booster fodder. Not much more than that. At least it's not as bad as Razor Boomerang.

Razor Boomerang at least made you think of combos or how you could abuse it. This just has zero chance of being played in anything but a joke deck.

Why do bad cards happen to good art?

I think this is the worst card in standard right now. At best it's {3} for an equipment that says "equipped creature gets +2/+2" Equip {2}. Vanilla equipment is just sad. Why no artifact creatures in this set either?

I... hmmm.... you could... oh who am I kidding. This blows. Hard. I imagine people tossing this card along with adverts from boosters.

There's just no pleasing some people.

When you make a conditional card like this, the right way to make it is to make it weaker than other cards by default, but stronger than other cards when the condition is met. Here, though, even if it is on a human, it's still not worth the price.

Superllama12 is right, though, that it's better than 0.5/5 -- A card has to go the extra mile of suck to get that rating from me, like Scorching Spear. This is a solid 1/5.

it should have trample at least. its heavy isn't it?

Commander Review: it's like one of the famous swords, regarding it's equip and casting cost. Except it gives no protection of two colors. And it doesn't have powerful triggered abilities. And it only gives +2/+2 in rare situations.
0.5/5

Pants!

Best way to get the full scope of why this card is awful? Sword of War and Peace.

As always, if you just look at a card in the specific context it's in, it makes alot more sense then just - "lets compare it to ther entire history of magic/ how i feel generally about X."

The only common equipment - in extended format - that boosts both a creatures toughness and power by 2 points are; Copper Carapace and Adventuring Gear, which both come with a signficant drawback ( no blocking, and only turns on with landfall respectively).

By the way im choosing the extended format here for my example as there arnt enough cards in standard to compare to and if we use modern it includes mirrodin which is all kinds of crazy broken, and before the current era of magic design.

Heavy mattock will always give a creature +1/+1 for two equip cost. Copper carapace will always give a creature +2/+2 and takes away the blocknig ability for three euip cost.

If you meet the requirements to turn on the mattock, its +2/+2 for two, and it can block.

Also one needs to remember that unlike Adventuring gear and Copper Carapace the mattock works in the same way as kicker in that it has added value in its versatility.

If i have a human, great, if i dont, it will still be fine in most situations. My creatures can ALWAYS use +1/+1, but there are times that you need to block when drawing the carapace, or times when you dont have a land and draw the adventuring gear.
Versatitlity is invisible value.

Also i think in general people undervalue how powerful equipment is, that boosts power (especially at common level) in a limited format. Go play Mirrodin block draft and see the mess of +3/+3 common equipment for three equip cost or games which simply come down to - "Did I, or did I not draw my loxodon war hammer and equip it to...anything"

I think it's telling that even in the most ideal situation, this is still a worse piece of equipment than if you had Bludgeon Brawl and any 2-cmc artifact (even something like Angel's Feather). I suspect this was nerfed during development - humans were too dominant, maybe?

+2/+2 is pretty strong. There are a lot of better equipments, and most people can't see past that. Most of the really good equipment is from the Mirrodin sets, and cards like Greatsword have proven that just because it's outclassed doesn't mean it's not insanely good. Especially in a format with tons of tokens, which means that this thing will be very strong in the right deck. While it may be weaker than the swords, it IS in a set with many more Human tokens to buff and less artifact-hate. In short: underrated.

What is it Wizards says? You need bad cards so the good cards can exist?

No. There is no excuse for this. At least most bad cards have some experimental or quirky mechanic that they use to justify the high cost. Wizards knows the limits of simple pump by now. There is no reason for this card to be this bad other than they wanted to waste a card slot.

Terrible since even if it gave +2/+2 to anything, it still wouldn't measure up that well.

you guys don't get it, do you? :p

It's farm equipment. this cuts down logs for firewood in the winter so you don't freeze to death.

list of things it does NOTcut:

Zombie Apocalypses

Werewolves that have lost humanity forever Immerwulf

Incorporeal Gheists of Baneslayer Angel Drogskol Reaver

Vampires....well, Vampires actually didn't seem to fair quite as well in this set compared to Innistrad.
(Sorin does not count), but they still have some good cards.

My point is that
In nearly every Block setting Wizards has ever made, they actually put up the pretense of all cards having kind of a fair/fighting chance, if not in the grander wars, then at least able to win battles in Limited.

But for once, they decided to actually go ahead and deliberately screw about a fifth of the cards. Look what humans get for a Mythic Rare on Innistrad: Archangel's Light. You thought their common equipment was going to be somehow good?

Innistrad's Dark Ascension is about mauling, eating, sacrificing, transmogrifying, reanimating, and in general dead-ifying humans in as many creative ways as possible. Including asking them to attack into Withengar Unboundwith this...uh...thing.

All i know is i made a human deck, and this didn't make the cut... humans make crap weapons so far. I'd rather throw the stump. Most farmers i know carry shotguns anyway.

Shotgun equipment would rock, tap to deal 3 damage to nearby enemy, doesn't untap next untap step.(need to reload). Heavy Arbalest? oh snap.

Rant aside, its not as good as Morningstar, and in most situations, including a human deck, i know which one I'd pick. But in this format, for humans, its really not that much worse... for humans... 2/5.

I use my copy of this card as a proxy for Sword of War and Peace.

:)

Yeah, this is no Sword of Fire and Ice.
On a Human, strictly worse than Vulshok Morningstar.
On anything else, also strictly worse than Leonin Scimitar, Horned Helm, Tenza, Sword of the Meek, Grifter's Blade, Gorgon Flail, Strider Harness, Flayer Husk, Bladed Bracers, and Sai of the Shinobi.
This would be *perfect* for my Terrible Cube, but lots of old terrible Humans weren't printed as such.

There was a thing called "Vulshock Morningstar".

However, the plane of Innistrad didn't have very good blacksmiths.

Mind you, this is just a Mattock: an axe kind of thing. It wasn't made for battle. The Morningstar is... well, a Morningstar.

I wanted to like the human equipment subtheme in Innistrad, but...they made it too hard to.

This card is a big FU from R&D. I dont care how good humans were doing in limited, the answer is not to completely ruin a card.

.5/5, FU R&D, crap like this makes me want to never buy a booster again. You happy? Should have made it +1/+1 and trample, and given humans an addition +1/+1, and reduce the casting cost to .


Strictly worse then Morningstar.

Strictly worse than the Swords of X and Y, but those are mythics... wait, Vulshok Morningstar was a common at one point. This is just inexcusable.