Pointed Discussion

A more versatile Overgrown Battlement, honestly though? I'd play both. That's some lovely acceleration together.

This would definitely be interesting in a defender/Wall EDH deck. Maybe with Rolling Stones and Doran, the Siege Tower...

This card is good on its own and will be just plain outrageous in my defender deck. By the way, I am a pro.

Defenders in Modern!? Make it happen someone. combo him with Ludevic's Test Subject.

Get's ok once you have two or three defenders in play.

The question is how you plan to win with defenders in play. Definately not by dealing combat damage. The stats are a bit very low too.

I understand that this creates any color of mana, but I think I'd still rather have the cheaper cost as well as the extra defense that Overgrown Battlement provides. Still, it's another card to add to my non-existent Vent Sentinel deck.

Vent Sentinel
Overgrown Battlement
Battle Rampart
This

What do you get? I don't know, but it will probably be a lot of fun!

Vent sentinel, Overgrown Battlement, and probably Comet Storm or Blaze/Fireball. Probably add a blue draw spell in there somewhere, like Blue Sun's Zenith, and probably some dirt cheap walls that cost 0 or 1 to help boost your mana.

The perfect compliment for my Wall of Kelp deck!

Seriously though, it's not as blatantly awesome as Overgrown Battlement, but for limited situations where you need lots of green mana acceleration that produces non-green mana, this is well worth the extra 1CMC.

Ok this one is going to go right into my new mill deck along with chronic flooding, increasing confusion, doorkeeper, fog bank, gatecreeper vine, etc. I may do self or opponent mill but im highly considering running forbidden alchemy, skaab ruinator and desolate lighthouse. Hell, I may even put unburial rights in there too if i self mill... Gotta figure something out. But oodles of mana makes for massive increasing confusions.

This guy belongs in lots of decks, mill being the most obvious since you don't attack to win. Next I think is door to nothingness which is followed closely by hydra and fireball decks. Fun times, cost appropriate and he gets lots of mana for you real quick.

Infinite Combo with Galvanic Alchemist as long as you have a total of 4 defenders or more. May sound a bit of a all-in combo at first, but combined with guild mages that's an infinite repetition of an effect using mana of any type and each axebane will provide you quite a bit of mana to play with until you reach that critical mass.

I'm currently trying to make a GWU mill deck using this, with Trostani, Selesnya's Voice and Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage to help keep my life total up and set up populates when profitable (including for a potential infinite health combo). Cackling Counterpart also makes an appearance with several potential combos (Including simply being used to provide another defender/axebane guardian/ Galvanic Alchemist.

Having two Galvanic Alchemists in your deck (or cackling counterparting one) lets you set up an infinite combo between the Axebane Guardian, galvanic alch, and a doorkeeper to instantly mill anyone out.

Rest in Peace is a necessary sideboard for my combo incase the enemy has a worldspine wurm or some other method of keeping their deck permanently in motion.

Standard legal btw.

This fun guy is good in its own and will be just plain removal to my Mono-Black controlo deck. By the way, I am novice so I know this thing.

@lorendorky
Happening as we speak. Running him in Standard along side Ludevic's Test Subject, Grave Bramble, Doorkeeper and a bunch of other defenders. With the help of some Jarad's Orders, I can fish for another guardian and drop Worldspine Wurm in the graveyard, (which triggers the wurms effect). With two gaurdians and some other 2/3 drop creatures keeping me safe, I can get my wurm out as early as turn 7. Throw in a Disciple of Griselbrand to sack the wurm (which gets me 3 smaller wurms) or my Tree of Redemption, I'm good to go. I leave four Devil's Plays too, just for an alternate win condition.

This and Door Keeper hint at a nice defender deck in the waiting.

One of overgrown battlements biggest downfalls is that you can only have 4 of them in your deck. This fixes that problem. And your mana base at the same time. Beautiful...
Moar defenders please!
5/5

Okay, I REALLY want to know why this is rated so low. I would argue that it is on par or BETTER than Overgrown Battlement, particularly because it can tap for ANY combination of ANY color, meaning it can have use in multi-colored decks in the same way Battlement was used. It's a really good card and I think it should be at LEAST in the 3.7 range rather than the 2.9 range.

And by the way, this thing is GODLY in Defender decks. I play a four color variant and this is so valuable to the deck.

Great combo with Deadeye Navigator, Village Bell Ringer, about 2 to 3 defenders and either lobber crew or any deals X damage spell. I can see it now....

I tossed together a defender deck in like, two seconds using this guy, most all of the RtR defenders, and a few Volcanic Geysers. It's a really silly deck.

Galvanic Alchemist
Azure Mage
Jade Mage
Fireball

Plus any other defenders, like Vent Sentinel or Overgrown Battlement

Infinite mana of every color, infinite card draw, infinite creatures, infinite damage, infinite whatever-you-want

Don't forget, you can also use extra Galvanic Alchemists with Vent Sentinel, or any of the other creatures that have already been suggested for that card

Also Crab Umbra

I'm digging the Defender subtheme so far in this set. And not just because of the "a bunch of Eldrazi jump out" foreshadowing for the third set of the block.

I made a green and blue infinite mana combo deck with this and Galvanic Alchemist, with Volcanic Geyser to kill the opponent. It wins on turn five. And since just about everything was common or uncommon, it was insanely cheap - about $5. I played against my friend with it and won easily 3 times in a row.

Defenders are actually looking pretty good now, between this and Doorkeeper. Not metagame-changing, but they're more dangerous than you might think.

This card is terribly underrated. Check this combo:

1. Island
2. Island, Doorkeeper
3. Forest, Axebane Guardian
4. Island, Freed from the Real on Axebane Guardian

Now you have infinite mana. With it, play Grozoth and search your library for the other 3. //**Pay the transmute cost on all of them to search for Staff of Domination, a Counterflux just in case, and the third on your choice of another Counterflux or Rootborn Defenses. In principle you only need the Staff, and the rest is optional.**//

(Edit: I just realized that Transmute trades the card for one with the same CMC as the CARD, not the transmute cost. So the //**...**// part doesn't apply. It could be replaced by Drift of Phantasms for a similar, if less spectacular, effect. Sorry, carry on. )

With the Staff of Domination in play, you can win in a variety of ways. You can use Doorkeeper's ability to mill the opponent's deck completely. Or you can draw as many cards as you need until you find a Banefire or Demonfire (or any similar sorcery) and deal infinite damage. Or you might go the hard route and tap everything controlled by the opponent and just attack him with the one Grozoth you have in play.

Options 2 and 3 are viable in case you didn't get Doorkeeper on the second turn. Any Defender with CMC 2 or less (like Fog Bank) will work (Steel Wall is a good choice, being colorless).

Maybe this combo can be further accelerated to play Axebane Guardian on turn 2, but I don't know how. I'm open to suggestions.

The point is that you only need 2 defenders in play, one of them this one, and Freed from the Real to have infinite mana, and do whatever the hell you want with it. Ludevic's Test Subject transforming instantly, for instance. The possibilities are endless!

This and door to nothingness are both in standard. It won't be winning any tournaments but I can see it causing lots of scoops on casual tables.

this card is hilarious because it lets you play normally shit cards as win condition, ended up with defender mill vs. self mill, won with an infinite increasing confusion

3/5.

Saw a guy once who drafted 3 of these, some Gatecreeper Vines, and a Worldspine Wurm. That was...most amusing.

Turn 1: Forest, Steel Wall/Traproot Kami
Turn 2: Forest, Overgrown Battlement
Turn 3: Forest, Overgrown Battlement, Axebane Guardian
Turn 4: Forest, cast any spell in the entire game.

Seriously.

The only two spells with a mana cost you can't pay at this point are Gleemax and the B.F.M.

And they gave this a 3.2...

Take away 1 toughness and add {1} to the converted mana cost and you can now justify producing mana of any color, instead of just green.
(Overgrown Battlement)

Yet another infinite mana combo with Galvanic Alchemist. This one's standard too (for now), but only works as long as you have 2 other defenders. Don't forget to grab with it to pay the untap cost every time.

I give this 5 stars because two of these and two overgrown battlements gave me 20 mana by turn 5, and I won the game on turn 6.

I've been using this build in my own deck for awhile now. Manaramp into your defenders, get the Guardian and Alchemist out together, and use all those flashback spells to locate Increasing Confusion to mill for infinite cards. If you can't pull that off, you can always get a second Alchemist soulbonded to a Doorkeeper and mill for infinite that way too. It runs surprisingly consistently because of all the deck-digging the spells do.

Creatures

Axebane Guardian X4
Galvanic Alchemist X4
Fog Bank X4
Gatecreeper Vine X4
Doorkeeper X4
Arbor Elf X4
Elvish Mystic X4

Other Spells

Tracker's Instincts X4
Forbidden Alchemy X4
Increasing Ambition X3
Increasing Confusion X1

Land
Forest X9
Island X3
Hinterland Harbor X4
Breeding Pool X4

I love to play Shifting Wall with the infinite mana combo. The look on my opponent's face when I get a 5000/5000 defender is great.

Then I can go ahead and Fling it!